DAVID RUGGLES
“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project David Ruggles HDT WHAT? INDEX
DAVID RUGGLES DAVID RUGGLES
1810
March 15, Thursday: David Ruggles was born in a free black family of Lyme, Connecticut, David Ruggles, Senior and Nancy Ruggles.
The New York State House of Representatives concurred with the Senate’s resolution calling for Governeur Morris, Stephen Van Rensselaer, DeWitte Clinton, Simeon De Witt, William North, Thomas Eddy, and Peter B. Porter to be appointed commissioners to explore routes for a canal across the state, and to recommend improvements to Onondaga Lake. ERIE CANAL
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 15th of 3 M 1810// I had a poor dull meeting, but the fault was my own. Oh when shall I experience more of the fullness. ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT
David Ruggles “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
DAVID RUGGLES DAVID RUGGLES
1833
June: A few months after the March outbreak of madness in Canterbury, Connecticut over the teaching of “young ladies and misses of color,” some of whom were from out of state, at Prudence Crandall’s school, the Connecticut legislature enacted a sneaky new law requiring that any school teaching out-of-state pupils had to have the approval of the town in which it was located. On the basis of this law, Headmistress Crandall was taken under arrest. Tactically, she and the abolitionists refused to post bail so that the authorities would be forced to book her. After she was held overnight, bail was posted and her school continued.
In the 4th National Negro Convention in Philadelphia, Robert Purvis served as the vice president and corresponding secretary from Pennsylvania. Purvis supported such racially neutral reforms as the temperance crusade, women’s rights, and the improvement of prison conditions. He believed that reform groups should be racially integrated. He opposed a legislative proposal that would have prevented out-of-state free blacks from settling in Pennsylvania. He became one of the founders of the Philadelphia Library Company of Colored HDT WHAT? INDEX
DAVID RUGGLES DAVID RUGGLES
Persons.
This Convention for the Improvement of the Free People of Colour would find itself able to “cheerfully recommend” Crandall’s school, when David Ruggles would propose that they specifically endorse the school,
his motion would fail of approval (MINUTES AND PROCEEDINGS OF THE THIRD ANNUAL CONVENTION FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE FREE PEOPLE OF COLOUR IN THESE UNITED STATES, HELD BY ADJOURNMENTS IN THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA, FROM THE 3RD TO THE 13TH OF JUNE INCLUSIVE, 1833. New York: by order of the Convention).
CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT
David Ruggles “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
DAVID RUGGLES DAVID RUGGLES
1834
David Ruggles’s THE “EXTINGUISHER” EXTINGUISHED OR DAVID M. REESE, M.D., “USED UP” was published in New-York.
“EXTINGUISHER”
A white medical doctor had charged that the American Anti-Slavery Society was encouraging interracial marriage. This black author pointed out common-sensically in response, that the main perpetrators of the amalgamation of the races in America happened to be the white slaveholders whom this society was struggling to subdue! HDT WHAT? INDEX
DAVID RUGGLES DAVID RUGGLES
1835
George Bourne’s, Puritan’s, and David Ruggles’s THE ABROGATION OF THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT, urging white wives to confront husbands who sexually used their female slaves.
During this year Harriet Jacobs’s white lover, Samuel Tredwell Sawyer, purchased her brother and her children. However, her owner, Dr. James Norcom, made numerous threats to sell the light-skinned boy and girl that she and Sawyer had produced. Harriet went into hiding in the crawl space above the ceiling of her grandmother’s home. I saw a mother lead seven children to the auction book. She knew that some of them would be taken from her; but they took all. The children were sold to a slave-trader, and the mother was bought by a man in her own town. Before night her children were all far away. She begged the trader to tell her where he intended to take them; this he refused to do. How could he, when he knew he would sell them, one by one, wherever he could command the highest price? I met the mother in the street, and her wild, haggard face lives today in my mind. She wrung her hands in anguish, and exclaimed, “Gone! All gone! Why don’t God kill me?” Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women.
SLAVERY
THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project David Ruggles HDT WHAT? INDEX
DAVID RUGGLES DAVID RUGGLES
November 20, Friday: The New-York Vigilance Committee was organized. David Ruggles would be its secretary.
Charles Darwin continued his explorations on Tahiti: In the morning we started early, and reached Matavai at noon. On the road we met a large party of noble athletic men, going for wild bananas. I found that the ship, on account of the difficulty in watering, had moved to the harbour of Papawa, to which place I immediately walked. This is a very pretty spot. The cove is surrounded by reefs, and the water as smooth as in a lake. The cultivated ground, with its beautiful productions, interspersed with cottages, comes close down to the water’s edge. From the varying accounts which I had read before reaching these islands, I was very anxious to form, from my own observation, a judgment of their moral state, — although such judgment would necessarily be very imperfect. First impressions at all times very much depend on one’s previously acquired ideas. My notions were drawn from Ellis’s “Polynesian Researches” — an admirable and most interesting work, but naturally looking at everything under a favourable point of view, from Beechey’s Voyage; and from that of Kotzebue, which is strongly adverse to the whole missionary system. He who compares these three accounts will, I think, form a tolerably accurate conception of the present state of Tahiti. One of my impressions which I took from the two last authorities, was decidedly incorrect; viz., that the Tahitians had become a gloomy race, and lived in fear of the missionaries. Of the latter feeling I saw no trace, unless, indeed, fear and respect be confounded under one name. Instead of discontent being a common feeling, it would be difficult in Europe to pick out of a crowd half so many merry and happy faces. The prohibition of the flute and dancing is inveighed against as wrong and foolish; — the more than presbyterian manner of keeping the sabbath is looked at in a similar light. On these points I will not pretend to offer any opinion to men who have resided as many years as I was days on the island. On the whole, it appears to me that the morality and religion of the inhabitants are highly creditable. There are many who attack, even more acrimoniously than Kotzebue, both the missionaries, their system, and the effects produced by it. Such reasoners never compare the present state with that of the island only twenty years ago; nor even with that of Europe at this day; but they compare it with the high standard of Gospel perfection. They expect the missionaries to effect that which the Apostles themselves failed to do. Inasmuch as the condition of the people falls short of this high standard, blame is attached to the missionary, instead of credit for that which he has effected. They forget, or will not remember, that human sacrifices, and the power of an idolatrous priesthood — a system of profligacy unparalleled in any other part of the world — infanticide a consequence of that system — bloody wars, where HDT WHAT? INDEX
DAVID RUGGLES DAVID RUGGLES
the conquerors spared neither women nor children — that all these have been abolished; and that dishonesty, intemperance, and licentiousness have been greatly reduced by the introduction of Christianity. In a voyager to forget these things is base ingratitude; for should he chance to be at the point of shipwreck on some unknown coast, he will most devoutly pray that the lesson of the missionary may have extended thus far. In point of morality, the virtue of the women, it has been often said, is most open to exception. But before they are blamed too severely, it will be well distinctly to call to mind the scenes described by Captain Cook and Mr. Banks, in which the grandmothers and mothers of the present race played a part. Those who are most severe, should consider how much of the morality of the women in Europe is owing to the system early impressed by mothers on their daughters, and how much in each individual case to the precepts of religion. But it is useless to argue against such reasoners; — I believe that, disappointed in not finding the field of licentiousness quite so open as formerly, they will not give credit to a morality which they do not wish to practise, or to a religion which they undervalue, if not despise. HDT WHAT? INDEX
DAVID RUGGLES DAVID RUGGLES
1838
Frederick Douglass and Anna Marie Murray fell in love and became engaged. Douglass took up the violin.
David Ruggles, who had acquired a heroic reputation for his help to escaping slaves (he would help some 600 persons in total, including in the course of this year Frederick Douglass), was kicked down a stairway by some white people who did not appreciate his plagiarism.1 Did this have something to do with the activities of the New-York Vigilance Committee of which Ruggles had become the Secretary?
1. (Relying here, of course, on the restricted etymological root sense of the term “plagiarism” –as in the alienation of the affections of one’s slave property– rather than on the modern rather more extended usage of that term.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
DAVID RUGGLES DAVID RUGGLES
September 5, Wednesday: After sleeping on the wharves for a number of nights to evade detection by the sort of slave- catchers who routinely watched the black boarding houses in hope of obtaining rewards, Frederick Douglass was rescued from the only relative security2 of the streets of New-York:
... I kept my secret to myself as long as I could, but I was compelled at last to seek some one who would befriend me without taking advantage of my destitution to betray me. Such a person I found in a sailor named Stuart, a warm-hearted and generous fellow, who, from his humble home on Centre street, saw me standing on the opposite sidewalk, near the Tombs prison. As he approached me, I ventured a remark to him which at once enlisted his interest in me. He took me to his home to spend the night, and in the morning went with me to Mr. David Ruggles, the secretary of the New York Vigilance Committee, a co-worker with Isaac T. Hopper, Lewis and Arthur Tappan, Theodore S. Wright, Samuel Cornish, Thomas Downing, Philip A. Bell, and other true men of their time. All these (save Mr. Bell, who still lives, and is editor and publisher of a paper called the “Elevator,” in San Francisco) have finished their work on earth. Once in the hands of these brave and wise men, I felt comparatively safe....
NARRATIVE LEWIS TAPPAN DAVID RUGGLES GEORGE THOMAS DOWNING ISAAC T. HOPPER
2. The Hortons say, on their page 227, “with the help of a free black woman named Anna and contacts in the underground railroad....” Had Douglass had any such contacts in the Underground Railroad organization he would not have wound up sleeping on the streets in New-York, ridiculously vulnerable to recapture. UNDERGROUND RAILROAD HDT WHAT? INDEX
DAVID RUGGLES DAVID RUGGLES
September 15, Saturday: Frederick Douglass and Anna Murray Douglass were wed in New-York:
... With Mr. Ruggles, on the corner of Lispenard and Church streets, I was hidden several days, during which time my intended wife came on from Baltimore at my call, to share the burdens of life with me. She was a free woman, and came at once on getting the good news of my safety. We were married by Rev. J.W.C. Pennington, then a well-known and respected Presbyterian minister. I had no money with which to pay the marriage fee, but he seemed well pleased with our thanks. Mr. Ruggles was the first officer on the “Underground Railroad” whom I met after coming North, and was, indeed, the only one with whom I had anything to do till I became such an officer myself. Learning that my trade was that of a calker, he promptly decided that the best place for me was in New Bedford, Mass. He told me that many ships for whaling voyages were fitted out there, and that I might there find work at my trade and make a good living. So, on the day of the marriage ceremony, we took our little luggage to the steamer John W. Richmond, which, at that time, was one of the line running between New York and Newport, R.I. Forty- three years ago colored travelers were not permitted in the cabin, nor allowed abaft the paddle-wheels of a steam vessel. They were compelled, whatever the weather might be,—whether cold or hot, wet or dry,— to spend the night on deck. Unjust as this regulation was, it did not trouble us much; we had fared much harder before....
This may certify, that I joined together in holy matrimony Frederick Johnson and Anna Murray, as man and wife, in the presence of Mr. David Ruggles and Mrs. Michaels. NARRATIVE__ JAMES W.C. PENNINGTON > NEW YORK, Sept. 15, 1838
UNDERGROUND RAILROAD This David Ruggles had been born free in Connecticut. This Presbyterian minister, however, the Reverend Dr. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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James W.C. Pennington DD, was himself an escaped slave formerly known as Jim Pembroke, and had also escaped from darkest Maryland.
ANNA MURRAY DOUGLASS FREDERICK DOUGLASS HDT WHAT? INDEX
DAVID RUGGLES DAVID RUGGLES
September 16, Sunday: Frederick Douglass and Anna Murray Douglass, as Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Johnson, were put by David Ruggles aboard the steamer John W. Richmond from New-York to Aquidneck Island3 in Rhode Island and there boarded a stagecoach headed toward the whaling port of New Bedford in the company of Friends Joseph Ricketson, Junior and William Congdon Taber.4
In New Bedford, known as a liberal town, the outlaw bridegroom would be seeking (but not finding, due to race prejudice) employment as a caulker — and would be put to work on the docks as a stevedore.
3. There is possible irony here, that might be looked into. What is the probability that Anna’s and Frederick’s black ancestors had been brought to this continent in ships owned by the international slavetraders of Newport? 4. Although Frederick Douglass’s various narratives all make the encounter in Newport seem quite accidental, it is rather more likely that David Ruggles had passed the word to the local anti-slavery society, and that Friends William Congdon Taber and Joseph Ricketson, Junior had been expectantly waiting for them to disembark from the steamer. HDT WHAT? INDEX
DAVID RUGGLES DAVID RUGGLES
ANNA MURRAY DOUGLASS FREDERICK DOUGLASS
We arrived at Newport the next morning, and soon after an old fashioned stage-coach, with “New Bedford” in large yellow letters on its sides, came down to the wharf. I had not money enough to pay our fare, and stood hesitating what to do. Fortunately for us, there were two Quaker gentlemen who were about to take passage on the stage,— Friends William C. Taber and Joseph Ricketson, —who at once discerned our true situation, and, in a peculiarly quiet way, addressing me, Mr. Taber said: “Thee get in.” I never obeyed an order with more alacrity, and we were soon on our way to our new home. When we reached “Stone Bridge” the passengers alighted for breakfast, and paid their fares to the driver. We took no breakfast, and, when asked for our fares, I told the driver I would make it right with him when we reached New Bedford.
WILLIAM C. TABER JOSEPH RICKETSON
“The capacity to get free is nothing; the capacity to be free, that is the task.” — André Gide, THE IMMORALIST translation Richard Howard NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970, page 7
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 16th of 9 M 1838 / I was so unwell for several days past that I could go out but little & have not attended Meetings today, but felt Able to be at the funeral of my Venerable Father in law Clarke Rodman, which was after the Afternoon Meeting - It was very numerously attended by people of all persuasions, & the sitting at the house was a very solemn Season leaving an evidence that words are not necessary to produce an evidence to the Truth but that it may be experienced in solemn Silence The only expressions were from Hannah Dennis simply the expression HDT WHAT? INDEX
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of the Scripture passage “Mark the perfect Man & behold the upright, for the end of that Man is peace.”- this simply expressed, without enlargement, left a precious savor & I never felt more unity with Hannah on any occasion. —- At the grave we had a Silent Solemn pause & the countenances of the people exhibited a reverence & respect not usually discoverable to the same extent on such occasions -
RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
DAVID RUGGLES DAVID RUGGLES
1839
September 6, Friday: David Ruggles, a blind black man of New-York, became entangled in the allegations of an Arkansas white man, a Mr. John P. Darg, that a Thomas Hughes who had belonged to him in Arkansas had managed to escape, and had in the process stolen some $9,000.00 which also belonged to Mr. Darg. (Actually, this makes a swell joke, when read with the indicated emphases, but it wasn’t considered to be in good taste at the time.)
Frederick Douglass’s NARRATIVE
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.
Mr. Ruggles was being categorized as an after-the-fact accessory to grand larceny, as, when Mr. Hughes had made his way to the Big Apple and had come to his boarding-house at the corner of Church and Lespenard Streets in need, Mr. Ruggles had merely played Good Samaritan rather than paying proper heed to our society’s concern for the maintenance of lawn order. For very shame! (Well, anyway, Ruggles would be out on bail for a long time and then the case would be dropped but in the meanwhile the case would make good newspaper copy and a lot of people would be attitudinizing about it.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
DAVID RUGGLES DAVID RUGGLES
1840
September: David Ruggles helped organize a national convention of black men, meeting in New Haven, Connecticut, which assembly was being resisted by white abolitionists as racially “exclusive in character.” Meanwhile, his health had declined and he was becoming virtually blind. (Could this health impairment be attributed to the beating he had sustained in 1838 at the hands of proslavery whites?)
A negrero flying the US flag, the Dido, master Strand, on the second of its two known Middle Passage voyages, having sailed out of Principe during July 1840 with a cargo somewhat racially “exclusive in character,” arrived in Cuban waters. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Andorinha, master unknown, on one of its four known Middle Passage voyages, out of Angola with an enslaved cargo of 650 souls (this cargo being somewhat racially “exclusive in character”), arrived at the port of Alto Moirao. A slaver flying the Portuguese flag, the Aguia, master R.A. Lima, on one of its five known Middle Passage voyages, out of Sao Tome with a cargo somewhat racially “exclusive in character,” arrived at the port of Maranhao, Brazil. THE MIDDLE PASSAGE HDT WHAT? INDEX
DAVID RUGGLES DAVID RUGGLES
1841
During this year William Cooper Nell delivered a speech at Zion’s Wesleyan Methodist Church in Boston, and a 3d lecture before “our own association.”
Although he was attempting to compile a biography of Crispus Attucks and had information on the manner of the man’s death, he was finding it difficult to obtain very much information about the man’s life.
He met with David Ruggles, the Reverend James W.C. Pennington, and John Bathan Vashon to organize a 1st Annual Convention of the American Reform Board of Disfranchised Commissioners, to be held in New-York.
Joining in a business committee with David Ruggles, Dr. John Brown, Thomas L. Jennings, Jr., and Prince Loveridge, he became that committee’s secretary.
July: David Ruggles refused to sit in the “Blacks Only” section of the steamboat to Nantucket Island, and was of course ejected.
August: David Ruggles got on a railroad car of the New Bedford railway, but not in the “Blacks Only” section, and so he was roughed up and ejected. When he filed suit, the judge’s decision was in favor of the railroad, for, since Ruggles was a black man, he should have sat in the black section, where he belonged, the place provided for him, and, in not sitting in the black section, it was clear, he merely got what he was trying to get: trouble. HDT WHAT? INDEX
DAVID RUGGLES DAVID RUGGLES
August 10, Tuesday: William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Frederick Douglass, Parker Pillsbury, and John A. Collins, as members of a “promiscuous” (that is, “integrated”) group totaling about 45, boarded the steamboat to Nantucket Island from which David Ruggles had been ejected in July, and held an antislavery meeting in the “Blacks Only” section. Possibly, they sang (to the tune of “Auld Lang Syne” all six stanzas of the following song, HDT WHAT? INDEX
DAVID RUGGLES DAVID RUGGLES
which was composed by Garrison during this year: HDT WHAT? INDEX
DAVID RUGGLES DAVID RUGGLES
1842
Dr. Benjamin Barrett of Northampton was chosen to the Massachusetts legislature.
David Lee Child placed an article about hydropathy in the National Anti-Slavery Standard. Such treatments were already available in Northampton.5 David Ruggles, a Lispenard Street grocer and bookseller, enters the annals of black New York history as an abolitionist. In 1834 he had been the 24-year-old organizer (with Henry Highland Garnet) of the Garrison Library and Benevolent Association. Sharing the concerns of Peter Williams, Jr., for boys like Isabella’s son Peter, Ruggles published a pamphlet citing the danger of their “being led into idle and licentious habits by the allurements of vice which surround them on every side.” He countered the temptations of evil by operating an informal employment agency and setting up a bookstore in his grocery to satisfy young men’s “mental appetites.” As the main agent of the Vigilance Society, he moved the reading room to the society’s offices in the late 1830s. Until Ruggles’s eyesight began to fail in the early 1840s, he remained at the forefront of the city’s antislavery forces. The head of the Vigilance Society, he was the key figure in New York City’s underground railroad and took care of fugitive slaves from the South such as Frederick Douglass and his fiancée Anna Murray, in 1838. In 1842, the antislavery author and editor of the New-York National Anti- Slavery Standard, Lydia Maria Child, suggested that Ruggles move to her base, Northampton, where he soon joined the Northampton Association and met Sojourner Truth. Acquaintance with Ruggles in Massachusetts in the 1840s and exchanges about her son with the Reverend Peter Williams in 1839 were her closest encounters with New York’s prominent black men. These notable men, who have become synonymous with the history of black New York, were for the most part ministers, and they held their own views about what was and was not appropriate in religion and in women. They would have been embarrassed by Isabella, who lived with the white prophets and cultists who were so common a feature of the
5. Hydropathy should not be confused with hydrotherapy. It involved, characteristically, a dominance by a demanding therapist who would require devotion to the regime and moral transformation, in addition to various rigorous and somewhat challenging water- related rituals. In other words, just the sort of regime that could be well calculated to make a sufferer want very much to get better quick — and get the hell out of there. HDT WHAT? INDEX
DAVID RUGGLES DAVID RUGGLES
era.
UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
November: William Lloyd Garrison and others had helped the blinded and ill David Ruggles to move to Northampton to recuperate, and in this month there was a specially convened meeting of the admissions board of the Association of Industry and Education that invited this black man to “come amongst us and remain with us as a member, without being admitted until better acquainted.” (This clause “without being admitted until better acquainted” would seem to have rapidly become a moot issue.)
COMMUNITARIANISM
THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project David Ruggles HDT WHAT? INDEX
DAVID RUGGLES DAVID RUGGLES
1843
Summer: At about this period David Ruggles began treating himself for his various quite serious ailments by hydropathy, under letter guidance from Dr. Robert Wesselhoeft of Boston. THE WATER CURE HDT WHAT? INDEX
DAVID RUGGLES DAVID RUGGLES
1844
August: At some time during this month, after encountering Frederick Douglass, Waldo Emerson would muse on the threat that dark persons might skulk in the night equipped with lucifer matches to destroy one’s property and knives to shed one’s blood. The white planters, it seems, were endangering us all, by permitting the presence of such outraged persons in this New World.
The planter does not want slaves: give him money: give him a machine that will provide him with as much money as the slaves yield, & he will thankfully let them go: he does not love whips, or usurping overseers, or sulky swarthy giants creeping round his house & barns by night with lucifer matches in their hands & knives in their pockets. No; only he wants his luxury, & he will pay even this price for it.
FIRE
At some point during this month there was a meeting of the black citizens of Northampton, presided over by the virtually blind masseur David Ruggles, with an address by the recently escaped slave Stephen C. Rush who at this point was learning to read and write. (There appears to be no record that afterward the more sultry and HDT WHAT? INDEX
DAVID RUGGLES DAVID RUGGLES
gigantic of these swarthy citizens of the town did any skulking through the night to destroy the property of white citizens with lucifer matches, or shed the blood of white citizens with knives. Go figure. :-)
DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.
David Ruggles “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
DAVID RUGGLES DAVID RUGGLES
September: At some point during this period, Dolly Witter Stetson of the Association of Industry and Education would be writing to her husband James A. Stetson, who was on the road selling the silk that had been produced. Since a public performance of sorts by Sojourner Truth is instanced in this letter, I will include it arbitrarily here — as an illustration of how difficult it has been to chronologize the gradual onsets of various forms of Truth’s public persona:
On Thursday Mr. Hammond’s little child passed to the ———— land. It has been a great suffering, a long time — its flesh was all wasted off its body, the funeral was Thursday 4 o’clock p.m. — Mary Bryant composed a hymn which was sung by the young people at the funeral, another hymn selected by Mrs. Hammond was sung. Remarks were made by Mr. Boyle Mach and Bassett. Sojourn also spoke with feeling and sang something on the death of an infant - The services were said to be very solemn and inspire — it rained very fast and I did not go over — Each of the children belonging to the junior and infant class had bouquets of evergreen and flowers mingled which they had intended to have thrown into the grave upon the coffin but as it rained they put them into the coffin as they went to look at the corpse. Last evening after the funeral, two of Sojourner’s daughters came from New York — [T]heir meeting was very affecting ... one of them came like the prodigal son having disobeyed her mother and had gone to live with a man who is a widower — and under promise of marrying her kept her to take care of his family and I do not know what more until she became afraid of him and he abused her shamefully some friends of Sojourners rescued her from his grasp and wrote up to see if she could come here. They said she could and her sister came to accompany her ... they are two fine looking negros as you every saw and are energetic like their mother.
There was a meeting in Northampton to protest the case of the Reverend Charles T. Torrey and the branded
hand case of Captain Jonathan Walker of Harwich MA, presided over by David Ruggles, with an address by Sojourner on “the practical workings of slavery in the North.” This is likely to have been Truth’s first public antislavery address as such. HDT WHAT? INDEX
DAVID RUGGLES DAVID RUGGLES HDT WHAT? INDEX
DAVID RUGGLES DAVID RUGGLES
Abolitionism’s Martyrs Elijah Lovejoy Charles Torrey Seth Concklin Alanson Week Aaron Burr George Thompson Calvin Fairbanks Delia Ann Webster Asa Mahon Daniel Drayton Jonathan Walker John Brown HDT WHAT? INDEX
DAVID RUGGLES DAVID RUGGLES HDT WHAT? INDEX
DAVID RUGGLES DAVID RUGGLES
1846
With the completion of the new rail link between Springfield and Greenfield, the town of Northampton, in between these two cities, began to experience a great surge of economic activity. There were more new house starts in this year in the town than in any three years together since 1830. Things were booming again. It would be a good year in which a commercial enterprise that had the advantage of being well managed might purchase cheap the lands and equipment and physical plant of a failed idealistic social experiment. However, the Valentine & Sowerby Company of the town received a “2d-best” silver medal from the American Institute of New York for its sewing-silk. (This private commercial enterprise was a direct local competitor of the Association of Industry and Education. Is this the Grim Reaper knocking at the door, or what?) For the children of the Association their previous more lenient schedule of morning education and afternoon and evening labor had, due to financial pressures, disappeared, and they were reduced to laboring all day six days a week in the Cocoonery and receiving their instructions only after supper until their bedtime. Communal and Utopian Startups
Period Startups 1841-1845 47 1846-1850 13 1851-1855 14
ONEIDA COMMUNITY EAGLESWOOD HOPEDALE
As this Association of Industry and Education broke up, Sojourner Truth would transit to being a housekeeper “in the role of guest” in the home of George Benson. Although Mau Mau chose not to dwell on this in her NARRATIVE, three of her offspring, Elizabeth Gedney, Sophia, and Jane, were with her in Northampton. David Ruggles made a present to Elizabeth, 21 years of age, of a shawl worth $2.50, a quite substantial amount of HDT WHAT? INDEX
DAVID RUGGLES DAVID RUGGLES
money, several days’ income, so he must have felt an attraction.6
When Olive Gilbert began in this year to write down the illiterate Truth’s stories about herself, one editorial remark in her preparation of the narrative would be something to the effect that the young women were suffering themselves to be “drawn by temptation into the paths of the destroyer.”
In the course of writing out this narrative of the life of Sojourner Truth, Olive Gilbert would spend several years in Daviess County on the Ohio River in northwestern Kentucky where her half-brother George Scarborough lived (presumably she would have been there as a governess for someone’s children), a venue in which she would have ample opportunities to make personal observations of harsh realities since roughly a third of the local population was enslaved, and since in that period there was epidemic fear of having one’s slaves stolen away by agents of the Underground Railroad.
WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF
6. Ruggles would die, and Elizabeth Gedney would marry a man named Banks in Connecticut in 1850 and bear him a child. HDT WHAT? INDEX
DAVID RUGGLES DAVID RUGGLES
April: On the basis of the hydropathic regime that had seemed to have been of benefit to himself, which he had received by letters of instruction from Dr. David Wesselhoeft of Boston, David Ruggles of the Association of Industry and Education was preparing to open his own water-cure establishment near Northampton.
August:David Ruggles of the Association of Industry and Education received investments totaling $2,000 from various townspeople of Northampton to expand the facilities of his water cure establishment.
Winter: At free black David Ruggles’s water cure establishment near Northampton, there was room for 30 to 40 patients (presumably, each and every one of these patients would have been lily white not only at the end of the water treatment but also at its inception):
“My mode of practice will not admit of an indifferent or evasive course on the part of the patient.”
Summer: William Lloyd Garrison was being treated at David Ruggles’s water cure establishment near Northampton.
LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project David Ruggles HDT WHAT? INDEX
DAVID RUGGLES DAVID RUGGLES
1849
December 26, Wednesday: David Ruggles died of a bowel infection in Florence, Massachusetts.
A process was set in motion in our nation’s puzzle palace on the Potomac (note that our national District of Columbia was then still wholly within the state of Maryland, and thus the property laws of that state applied), that would reach its completion on December 14, 1857: Know all men by these presents that I, Mary Watts of Saint Mary's County and State of Maryland for and in consideration of the sum of seven hundred dollars current money, to me in hand paid by Thomas Sumerville F.B. of the county and state aforesaid, at and before the sealing and delivery hereof, the receipt whereof I do hereby acknowledge; have granted, bargained and sold, and by these presents, do, grant, bargain and sell unto the said Thomas Sumerville F.B. his executors, administrators and assigns, one Negro woman Maria aged twenty five years, one Negro child named Sarah Ann ages six years, one Negro child named Thomas Randolph aged three years, and one other Negro child named Mary Ellen aged one year, all which Negroes are slaves for life. To have and hold the said described Negroes above bargained and sold to the said Thomas Somerville F.B. his executors, administrators and assigns, forever unto his and their only proper use and benefit, and I, the said Mary Watts for myself, my executors and administrators, shall and will warrant, and forever defend by these presents to the said Thomas Somerville F.B. his executors, administrators and assigns, the said described Negroes, against my executors and administrators, and against and all every other person or persons whomsoever I administer the same or any part thereof. In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and affixed my seal the twenty sixth day of December Eighteen Hundred and Forty Nine. Signed, sealed and delivered in the presence of } Mary Watts {seal} N. Furck
Received of Thomas Sumerville F.B. the sum of seven hundred dollars in the full of the consideration specified to be paid in the above Bill of sale. 26th December 1849 Mary Watts State of Maryland, St. Mary's County, J.P. On this 26th day of December 1849 before one of the justices of the peace of the state of Maryland in and for said county, personally appeared Mary Watts and acknowledges the foregoing bill of sale or instrument of writing to be her act and deeds according to the purport true intent and meaning thereof-And at the same time and place also appeared before me Thomas Somerville F.B. the grantee oath that the consideration set forth in the said Bill of sale is true and bona fide as therein HDT WHAT? INDEX
DAVID RUGGLES DAVID RUGGLES
set forth. Acknowledged & sworn before N. Furck, J.P. {seal}
Jany. 3rd 1850. Recd. of Thomas Sumerville the sum of one dollar the stamp duty required by law on this Bill of sale. Wm. T. Maddox St. Mary's Cnty.
Saint Marys County to wit Thereby certify that the aforegoing is truly taken from the original field in my office on the 3rd Jany. 1850. In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and affixed the seal of my office this 12th day of March eighteen hundred and fifty. Wm. Maddox St. Mry’s. Cnty. Clk.
Deed of manumission District of Columbia, County of Washington To all whom it may concern. Be it known that I, Thomas Sumerville of the city of Washington in the district of Columbia for divers good causes and considerations, me thereunto moving have released from slavery, liberated, manumitted and set free and by means presents do hereby release from slavery, liberate, manumit and set free my wife Maria being of the age of thirty four years and able to work and gain a sufficient livelihood and maintenance and she the said Negro slave named Maria Somerville I do declare to be henceforth free, manumitted, discharged from all manner of service or servitude to me, my executors and administrators forever. In witness whereof I have this fourteenth day of December in the year of our Lord One Thousand Eight Hundred and Fifty Seven set my hand and seal. Thomas (X) Sumerville {seal} Signed Sealed and delivered in presence of Witness Jas. Cull ?Alexander Cull
District of Columbia, Washington County On this 14th day of December 1857 before me the subscriber a Justice of the Peace for the County aforesaid personally appeared Thomas Sumerville and acknowledged the above Deed of manumission to be his act and deed for the purpose set forth. Jas. Cull, J.P. {seal} HDT WHAT? INDEX
DAVID RUGGLES DAVID RUGGLES
“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING, HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project David Ruggles HDT WHAT? INDEX
DAVID RUGGLES DAVID RUGGLES
COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2014. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at
“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST
Prepared: April 7, 2014 HDT WHAT? INDEX
DAVID RUGGLES DAVID RUGGLES
ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT
GENERATION HOTLINE
This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX
DAVID RUGGLES DAVID RUGGLES
Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.
First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with