Robert Treat Paine

Robert Treat Paine (1731-1814) was a lawyer, preacher, teacher, merchant mariner, activist, and an intellectual. He came from a well off Boston family of educated ministers. Paine’s people came from Tyrone, Ireland. One of which originally traveled to the New ...

Boston Women's Memorial: Phillis Wheatley

Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784) came to America when she was a sickly eight years old. After landing in Boston, John Wheatley bought her as a domestic slave for his wife Susana. John and Susana, then later their children, were all instrumental ...

Patrick A. Collins

Patrick A. Collins (1844-1905) was the second Irish mayor of Boston, serving from 1902-1905 when he died still in office. He was born in Ireland and when he was four, he and his mother immigrated to the United States. They ...

Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin

Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin (1842-1924) was born and raised in Boston by a mixed race family. Her family was religious, her father helped found a Boston Zion church. The family was also considered one of the most well off and ...

John Singleton Copley

John Singleton Copley (1738-1815) was the son of Irish immigrants, but was a native-born Bostonian. After his father passed away at an early age, his mother remarried a London trained engraver. By having an artist in the family, Copley was ...

Crispus Attucks

Crispus Attucks died March 5, 1770 during the Boston Massacre. He is considered the first martyr of the American Revolution and later became a role model during the civil rights movement of the 1850s. Little is known about Attucks, but ...

The Pink Haired Madame

If you lived in Pensacola at the dawn of the 20th Century, venturing south on Palafox below Government Street meant that you were looking for entertainment of an adult variety.

Known to local citizens as “The Line,” the ...

Up in Flames!

Some people can take their hobbies a little too seriously! In June of 1984, two Pensacola teenagers broke into the Sportland News Company on South Palafox Street. The two would-be burglars made off with over 500 comic books, many ...