BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY David Ruggles March 15, 1810 - December 16, 184 was an anti-slavery activist who was active in the New York Committee of Vigilance and the Underground Railroad. He was 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 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.
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.
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 Northampton, Massachusetts, which was located in a village of Northampton later named Florence, Massachusetts in 1852.
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. This was one of the earliest in the United States, although others, notably Joel Shew, and Russell Thatcher Trall (R.T. Trall), had preceded him. Ruggles died in Florence in 1849.
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