David Ruggles was born in Norwich, Connecticut in 1810. His parents, David Sr. and Nancy Ruggles, were free African Americans. His father was born in Norwich in 1775 and worked as a journeyman blacksmith. His mother was born in 1785 in either Lyme or Norwich and worked as a caterer. Ruggles was the first of eight children.
In 1826, at the age of sixteen, Ruggles moved to New York City, where he worked as a mariner before opening a grocery store. Nearby, other African-Americans ran grocery businesses in Golden Hill (John Street east of William Street), such as Mary Simpson (1752-March 18, 1836). After 1829, abolitionist Sojourner Truth (born Isabella ("Bell") Baumfree; c. 1797 – November 26, 1883) also lived in lower Manhattan. At first, he sold liquor, then embraced temperance. He became involved in anti-slavery and the free produce movement. He was a sales agent for and contributor to The Liberator and The Emancipator, abolitionist newspapers.
After closing the grocery, Ruggles opened the first African American-owned bookstore in the United States. The bookstore was located on Lispenard Street near St. John's park in what is today the Tribeca neighborhood. Ruggles' bookstore specialized in abolitionist and feminist literature, including works by African-American abolitionist Maria Stewart. He edited a New York journal called The Mirror of Liberty, and also published a pamphlet called The Extinguisher. He also published "The Abrogation of the Seventh Commandment" in 1835, an appeal to northern women to confront husbands who kept enslaved African women as mistresses.
Ruggles was secretary of the New York Committee of Vigilance, a radical biracial organization to aid fugitive slaves, oppose slavery, and inform enslaved workers in New York about their rights in the state. New York had abolished slavery and stated that slaves voluntarily brought to the state by a master would automatically gain freedom after nine months of residence. On occasion, Ruggles went to private homes after learning that enslaved Africans were hidden there, to tell workers that they were free. In October 1838, Ruggles assisted Frederick Douglass on his journey to freedom, and reunited Douglass with his fiancé Anna Murray. Rev. James Pennington, a self-emancipated slave, married Murray and Douglass in Ruggles' home shortly thereafter. Douglass' autobiography 'Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass' explains "I had been in New York but a few days, when Mr. Ruggles sought me out, and very kindly took me to his boarding-house at the corner of Church and Lespenard Streets. Mr. Ruggles was then very deeply engaged in the memorable Darg case, as well as attending to a number of other fugitive slaves, devising ways and means for their successful escape; and, though watched and hemmed in on almost every side, he seemed to be more than a match for his enemies."
Ruggles was especially active against kidnapping bounty hunters (also known as "blackbirds"), who made a living by capturing free African people in the North and illegally selling them into slavery. With demand high for slaves in the Deep South, another threat was posed by men who kidnapped free blacks and sold them into slavery, as was done to Solomon Northup of Saratoga Springs, New York, in 1841. With the Vigilance Committee, Ruggles fought for fugitive slaves to have the right to jury trials and helped arrange legal assistance for them.
His activism earned him many enemies. Ruggles was physically assaulted and his bookshop was destroyed through arson. He quickly reopened his library and 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. He was criticized for his role in the well-publicized Darg case of 1838, involving a Virginia slaveholder named John P. Darg and his slave, Thomas Hughes.
Ruggles suffered from ill health, which intensified following the Darg case. In 1841, his father died, and Ruggles was ailing and almost blind. In 1842, Lydia Maria Child, a fellow abolitionist and friend, arranged for him to join a radical Utopian commune called the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, in the present-day village of Florence, Massachusetts.
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 Florence. This was one of the earliest in the United States. Joel Shew and Russell Thacher Trall (R.T. Trall) had preceded him in using this type of therapy. Ruggles died in Florence in 1849, at the age of thirty-nine, due to a bowel infection
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