Anderson Abbott, died December 29, 1913

Abbott was one of only thirteen black surgeons to serve in the Civil War, a fact that fostered a friendly relationship between him and President Abraham Lincoln. 

On the night of April 14, 1865, after Lincoln was shot, Abbott accompanied Elizabeth Keckley (Mary Lincoln's dressmaker and confidant) to the Peterson House, where the president was dying.  He returned to his lodgings that evening. After Lincoln's death, Mary Todd Lincoln presented Abbott with the plaid shawl that Lincoln had worn to his 1861 inauguration.  

In 1866, Abbott resigned from service to the Union Army and returned to Canada.  He established a medical practice and was admitted to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario in 1871. 

At the turn of the century, he became embroiled in the debate between W. E B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington over social change. Siding with Du Bois, Abbott believed that Black access to higher education was essential and should not be compromised. 

W. E B. Du Bois

Abbott wrote "It is just as natural for two races living together on the same soil to blend as it is for the waters of two river tributaries to mingle." 

Mary Ann Casey Abbott

At the age of 76, Abbott died on December 29, 1913, at the Toronto home of his son-in-law Frederick Langdon Hubbard, son of his long-time friend William Peyton Hubbard. 

William Peyton Hubbard

He was buried in the Toronto Necropolis.