Lawyer/Politician
Centurion, 1866–1881
Born 11 April 1800 in New Milford, Connecticut
Died 28 August 1881 in Kismet, Fire Island, New York
Buried Trinity Church Cemetery and Mausoleum
, Manhattan, New York
Proposed by Henry C. Dorr and Gulian C. Verplanck
Elected 2 June 1866 at age sixty-six
Archivist’s Note: Second vice president of the Century Association, 1873. Father of James F. Ruggles; father-in-law of George Templeton Strong.
Proposer of:
Century Memorial
In striking contrast with him [i.e., William Kemble] mentally, Samuel B. Ruggles belonged, if ever human spirit did belong, to the future. From his laboriously garnered and exactly arranged stores of abstractions, he never rested in shaping the concrete images of national greatness in coming things. With his look steadily fixed on the horizon, he was the genuine Vates, the foreseeing one, all whose visions came precisely to fulfillment, and for the most part in his own day. In the Club, in the City, in the land, all he noted the beginnings of swept on with steady course to the full completion his sagacity foretold. His foresight, kindled by insight, touched his conversation with a breadth and suffused it with a glow that fascinated even those who did not rise to his enthusiasm. This fixed onward-tending habit of mind made him one of the most instructive of companions, as he was one of the most true and cordial of friends.
Augustus R. Macdonough
1882 Century Association Reports
