Almon Ruggles, Surveyor

Almon Ruggles died on July 17, 1840 in his 69th year. He is buried in Oak Bluff Cemetery in Berlin Township of Erie County, Ohio, along the shore of Lake Erie. Henry Howe wrote in his HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS OF OHIO that Almon Ruggles was the original surveyor of the Firelands. He came to Ohio from Danbury, Connecticut in 1805, to survey the Firelands, an area of the Connecticut Western Reserve which now is made up primarily of Erie and Huron Counties in north central Ohio. Almon ruggles became the first recorder of Huron County in 1809. He was appointed Associate Judge of Huron County about 1815, and he was elected State Senator in 1816 and 1818. In 1824 he was elected State Representative. Almon Ruggles was married to Annis Dibble in 1808. After Annis Dibble Ruggles passed away in 1815, Almon Ruggles married Rhoda Buck, whose maiden name was Rhoda Sprague.

In a Firelands Pioneer article, which now appears online at a USGenWeb Archives site, we read this description of Almon Ruggles:

Judge Ruggles possessed fine conversational powers. He had an almost inexhaustible fund of anecdote, and generally entertained both the learned and unlearned by his happy use of it. He knew just where a laugh should come in in conversation and would often set the example by laughing himself, and his laugh was very apt to be contagious. It was something more than a smile or the laughing of the face - it was a hearty laugh, and shook him all over. He laughed "from head to heel."


An excellent biographical sketch of Almon Ruggles is found online.