Samuel B. Ruggles

Full Name: Samuel Bulkley Ruggles

Lawyer/Politician

Centurion, 1866–1881

Proposed by
Henry C. Dorr and Gulian C. Verplanck

born April 11, 1800
New Milford, Connecticut

died August 28, 1881
Kismet, Fire Island, New York

elected June 2, 1866
Age sixty-six

buried Trinity Church Cemetery and Mausoleum,
Manhattan, New York

proposer of

Member portrait of Samuel B. Ruggles — Member Photograph Albums CollectionAlbum 3, Leaf 83

To inquire about image use and/or publication, contact the Archivist.

Archivist’s Notes

Second vice president of the Century Association, 1873. Father of James F. Ruggles; father-in-law of George Templeton Strong.

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

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