David Ruggles

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David Ruggles (1810 – December 16, 1849) was an anti-slavery activist who was active in the New York Committee of Vigilance and the Underground Railroad. As an “African-American printer in New York City during the 1830s”, who “was the prototype for black activist journalists of his time”. He claimed to have led over six hundred people, including friend and fellow abolitionist Frederick Douglass, to freedom in the North.

Ruggles was born in [Lyme, Connecticut]]. His parents were David Ruggles, Sr. and Nancy Ruggles, both free blacks. The family moved to Norwich, Connecticut when David was very young and set up home in Bean Hill, a wealthy suburb of Norwich. The family lived a small hut owned by Nancy’s wife, Sylvia. David, Sr. was a blacksmith and woodcutter while Nancy was a noted caterer, whose cakes were sought after for any social event of consequence. They were devout Methodists. David was the oldest of seven children. He was educated at sabbath schools and became so learned Bean Hill residents paid for a tutor from Yale to teach him Latin. At the age of sixteen, he moved to New York City where he worked as a mariner before opening a grocery store. At first, he sold liquor then embraced temperance. He became involved in anti-slavery and the Free Produce Movement. He was an agent for the Liberator and Emancipator. After he closed his grocery, he opened the first African-American bookstore in the United States. He edited a New York journal called The Mirror of Liberty, and also published a pamphlet called The Extinguisher and contributed to abolitionist newspapers such as The Emancipator and The Liberator. .He also published The Abrogation of the Seventh Commandment in 1835, a call to northern women to shun their southern sisters who were complicit in slave rape.

Ruggles was secretary of the New York Committee of Vigilance, a radical organization designed to inform enslaved workers in New York about state laws declaring that enslaved workers be emancipated after nine months of residence. Ruggles would patrol elite neighborhoods and enter the homes there, by force if necessary, to tell workers that they were free.

Ruggles was especially active against “kidnappers,” bounty hunters who made a living by capturing escaped slaves. With the vigilance committee, he fought for these fugitives to have the right to jury trials and legal assistance. In September 1838 Ruggles took on the case of an escaped Maryland slave, Frederick Washington Bailey.  Later Bailey changed his name to Frederick Douglas.

His activism earned him many enemies. Ruggles was physically assaulted and his business was destroyed through arson. He quickly reopened his library an bookshop. There were two known attempts to kidnap him and sell him into slavery in the South. His enemies included fellow abolitionists who disagreed with his tactics, including his participation in the well-publicized Darg case of 1838 involving a Virginia slaveholder named John P. Darg and one of his slaves, Thomas Hughes.^[2][3]

Ruggles suffered from ill health which intensified following the Darg case. In 1841, his father died, and Ruggles was himself ailing and almost blind. In 1842, a fellow abolitionist and friend, Lydia Maria Child, arranged for him to join a radical utopian commune called the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, in Northhampton, Massachusetts, which became named Florence, Massachusetts in 1852.^[4][2][3]

Applying home treatment upon hydropathic principles, he regained his health to some degree, but not his eyesight. He began practicing hydrotherapy, and by 1845, had established a water cure hospital in the area now known as Florence.

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