At the corner of Temple and Federal Streets stood the hack stand of Reuben Ruby, who lived from 1798 to 1878 and was Portland's foremost African American anti-slavery activist and Underground Railroad conductor. In 1826, Ruby helped publish a protest in the newspaper against the treatment of "some six hundred African Americans" in Portland's white houses of worship. In 1832, he escorted William Lloyd Garrison around Portland in one of his carriages, introduced him to twenty-one Black anti-slavery activists, and hosted him at the Abyssinian Church, which Ruby helped found and finance.