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(Transcribed by Peggy Barriskill Perazzo, December 2005)

"Recollections of A Busy Life,"
By Eli Fayette Ruggles

H. L. Ruggles & Co., Publishers, (published circa 1904)

Dedicated to My Faithful Wife, Viola who has been my companion and helpmeet
through storm and sunshine; loving and kind, she has been a most faithful
and devoted mother to our children who love, and adore her.

Eli Fayette Ruggles (1833 - 1904)

On the 19th day of August 1904, after a brief illness of ten days, Father
Ruggles was laid to rest in the beautiful Forest Home Cemetery, at Oak
Park, Illinois. It is a beautiful spot - an eminently fitting place for one
of the noblest characters the world has ever known.

Father Ruggles was a good, upright, honest Christian man, one of God's own
sons, and to know him, was to love him for his sterling qualities.

Always ready with a kind word and a helping hand for those in distress, and
ever charitable to the hungry wayfarer that knocked at his door.

He uncomplainingly and willingly sacrificed his own prospects and aims, so
that his children might secure that education and those advantages which
would so well fit them for the battle of life.

The inheritance that he leaves is the riches - the knowledge of his pure
character, the remembrance of his unfailing devotion, and his lasting love.

Chapter 1.

The journey of life has been likened by some one to a man beginning to
climb at the base of a double ladder and at the top, forty-five years
later, is in his best manhood - then begins the descent, and when at its
base is an old man, and the grave receives him.

This view of life may do for an old bach. or maid, but does not meet my
case - for on this journey I have taken a companion to share my joys and
sorrows, and I call her my wife - Viola - and at the time of reaching the
top of the ladder we are surrounded with five children, and have buried one
on the way. And now you, my children, want to know of my life from earliest
recollection to this time.

My beginning in life was just the same as yours, so far as life is
concerned. Somebody found us a little bundle of humanity nestling close to
a fond mother, and she turns a light covering back and somebody looks and
looks again at that infant face and tries to reason about that baby. What
does the little thing know? - nothing. Where did he come from? - and you
can't answer your own question. Neither can the wisest man that ever lived.
Your only source of information is what is revealed in the Bible, and even
that is but faintly told - for that is of God's secrets. There is nothing
in God's creation that so fully reveals the wisdom of God as a baby.

When I was 21 years of age my mother gave me for a birthday present a
little lace nightcap that she said I wore when a baby. That is my mother's
evidence that I was once a baby. That baby, as he grew in stature and
strength to hear it, received the name of Eli Fayette Ruggles. How the name
of Fayette was chosen I can only surmise. LaFayette was not of this
country, but came to it in her hour of greatest need, and found in many a
hard battle till its life and existence was safe, and then returned to his
native land. So as he was but a part of us I received but part of his name.

I had a chance of seeing other mothers as they came to visit and take tea,
and the earliest reasoning I had was that of all the mothers I had seen
mine was the quickest. How quick, she would whirl the table into the middle
of the floor and make the dishes rattle in their places! You see, I had an
interest in that.

Then, as I grew to be quite a boy, I noticed the cat and dog were lying
with their hind feet close together, and, a string being handy and a little
fun wanted, I tied their hind feet together and soon the dog concluded to
be off - and such a yelling of dog and cat and rattling of chairs as they
tumbled pell-mell - and mother was on hand quick, I assure you. She grabbed
me up and put some good, solid spanks on me as quick as I had ever known
her to do anything in the way of business.

One day father said to mother: "I guess I shall have to get some glasses,
for that cataract is affecting my sight so I see but dimly," and mother
looked in his eye and said, "Surely it is growing, and I fear it will spoil
that eye." Father was both carpenter and farmer.

Father had been hewing timber in the woods to build a barn, and it was on a
side hill. One very frosty and slippery morning he was driving the cows
over this spot to prevent their going to the prairie and picked up a chip
and threw it at the cattle; his feet slipped from under him and he fell
face down, striking the affected eye directly on a dry stub or stick that
was standing directly upwards, penetrating the eye - forced the eyeball out
on his cheek and broke off, leaving a piece some eight inches long outside
the face, beside what was in the head. A doctor was called, and can you
imagine what must have been the agony when that stick was pulled from his
head? Then the torn flesh was stitched up after the eyeball was replaced,
but father always carried the scars.

But another baby boy has come to our home, and he is named Joseph Westley.
This home and of what I write is in the country, not far from Milan and
Norwalk, Ohio.

To speak to you about a railroad, you think of long trains of cars being
whirled over a nice smooth track at the rate of forty or sixty miles per
hour, and the passengers in perfect ease and comfort. About the days of old
of which I write the first railroad was then building through our vicinity.
Straps of iron nailed on long timbers and car or large box with four wheels
under it - three quarters of the car for freight, and drawn by a span of
horses - that was our railroad.

Later steam began to be the power, but uncontrollable. No person dare ride
on or with it save the experimenter, and it took years to perfect it and
control it safely.

Living not far from our house was father's father and mother. I was full of
boy antics when I could see grandpa and grandma come to our house. Grandma
was blind, but she always brought something good to us children, and
grandpa was always so good-natured that I came to love them both. Grandma
would knit and mother spin. But grandpa got too old to do his work, and it
was arranged that one of his sons should have his property and care for
them as long as they lived. But they lived longer than this son thought
they would, and the son and his wife (they laid it mostly to the wife)
figured it out that they had kept them as long as they ought to have lived,
and they could not afford, and more than that, they would not keep them
longer. They were adding farm after farm to their home farm, and were
becoming idolaters to wealth. It is said that they would skim milk the
third time and then give it to their hired men to drink. Uncle Eli, living
in Milan seeing that his father and mother were so unwelcome by his
brother, told him to bring their parents to his house and he would care for
them, which was done, and there they remained content and welcome till they
died, at a ripe age of near 90 years. All honor to Uncle Eli, after whom I
was named!

In this vicinity lived most of father's brothers and sisters, and here I
give their names:

Sara. Married Josiah Drake. One son lives yet in Norwalk and has a livery
stable.

Daniel. Became a rich farmer, and his children still live near Milan.

Polly. Married Benjamin Jackson. Moved to California about 1858. Joel,
their son, went with Fernando and Lyman, 1849.

Peter. Moved to St. Joe, Mich., about the time we came to Michigan. Later
he built a saw and grist mill ten miles south of St. Jo. Sally and Emma
were his daughters.

Martin was a ship carpenter. Worked in Milan and Sandusky.

Salmon. Ship carpenter.

William. Carpenter. Moved to Chicago. Burned out by the great fire of 1871.
Later moved to and died in California.

Eli. Carpenter and wheelwright at Milan.

A disease called bloody murrain has been very fatal with horses and cattle
in all this portion of country for a
long time, and father has lost some of his, and he has a pair of beautiful
black horses with a star in each forehead, and he has been giving
preventives - but those fine blacks have to go just as others have gone,
and father is very much discouraged.

Fernando has been in Michigan the past year and writes a glowing letter of
the blessings of good health, rich soil, etc. Father decides to move to
Michigan, and arranges accordingly. Gets canvas and bends long strips of
wood over two wagons, puts on the canvas, sells off furniture and makes
ready. But here comes a wagonload of folks and stops in front of our house,
and here is grandpa and grandma and Uncle Eli and Auntie and many others of
the relatives. Well, Joseph, I hear that you are going to the far west.
Well, I can't blame you much, but we are awfully sorry to have you and your
nice family of boys leave us. See how many have you now - Fernando, Freman,
Martin, Lyman, Lewis, Eli and Westley - seven all told. Well, they are a
nice lot of healthy fellows, too. But how about mother? You ask where did
she come from. Mother's people lived just across the state line, in
Pennsylvania. Father, when a young man, was teaching school and also
singing school in that vicinity, and became acquainted with and later
married Sylvia Brown, that since became our mother.

Now, let us have some singing - and grandpa and the older boys take the
bass and Grandma takes soprano and father the tenor, and they sing, "The
morning sun shines from the east and spreads his glories to the west." Then
Sherborn was called for, and again they sing, "While Shepherds watch their
flocks by night."

Oh, it would have done you good to hear that soprano and tenor. Grandma sat
with head thrown a little back and her sightless eyeballs raised as if
seeing the unseen - hands clasped together and her thumbs playing round and
round each other. Oh, it was grand singing. Then grandpa and all the rest
knelt before God while he implored the Good Shepherd to be with his son
Joseph and his family as he journeyed to the far west. And here I wish to
say that I sadly regret that I did not long years ago write down what I
have heard father tell when on the old farm in Michigan about his people
from his earliest recollection to the time of which I now write when he was
to leave Ohio. My father was of the fourth generation of Ruggles'. Joseph
Ruggles the first was from Scotland, and the name was transmitted from
father to son. My father being the fourth, I will here give part of a
clipping from a Chicago paper of the past year.

"Havana, Ill., Feb. 9

"General J. M. Ruggles, an old settler and veteran of the Civil War, died
here this morning at the Hopping Sanitarium. General Ruggles was born March
7, 1818, in Richland County, Ohio, and was of noted ancestry, his
great-uncle being Brigadier Timothy Ruggles, who was president of the first
congress which ever met in America in New York in 1755."

Another great-uncle, John Ruggles, was three times elected United States
Senator from Maine, and another uncle, Benjamin, was first United States
Senator from Ohio, serving eighteen years, from 1818. His father, Judge
Spooner Ruggles, was State Senator in Illinois from Ogle and Winnebago
counties in 1842. General Ruggles came to Illinois in 1833 with his
parents. From 1852 to 1856 in the State Senate. He drafted the first
platform on which the Republican party of Illinois was organized. At the
outbreak of the Civil War he was appointed lieutenant of the First Illinois
Calvary by Governor Yates. When mustered out, in 1864, he was
lieutenant-colonel of the Third Illinois Cavalry. He was Master in Chancery
for Mason County for several years after the war. This record tells us that
we have relatives in Illinois, if we wish to hunt them up.

The two wagons have had their white canvas tops for a few days and some
neighbors have called to say good-bye, and Aunt Aurelia, father's oldest
sister, that married Mr. Whitford, and Aunt Sarah, that married Mr. Drake,
and Aunt Polly, that married Benjamin Jackson, Uncle Martin and Salmon and
Orrin and William and Uncle Eli all live in this vicinity, and called to
see the family off to Michigan.

One wagon takes the family, the other the household goods, such as bedding,
etc. To the outside of one wagon box is attached a chicken coop. Good-bye
to associations of many years to father and mother, good-bye to Milan and
Norwalk, and away we start for the then far west.

It was slow traveling with muddy roads and oxen. We sleep in the wagon, and
that is all right, but I wish they had left those chickens at the old home,
for every morning long before day that rooster is calling -
time-to-get-up-up. I wish he would shut his yaup. But the older members of
the wagonhold said it is all just right, and they feed the cattle and build
a fire out of sticks and brush, and mother gets us a good breakfast for
good appetites.

When near Kalamazoo, Mich., Lyman says to father, what prevents our
locating here? See this small prairie of about 300 acres surrounded with
timber. Take 160 acres about half prairie, then all we need to do is to get
a home started and then hitch to a plow and your land is already cleared,
and fine land it is, too. I knew by the looks of the road.

But Fernando had been writing home about the fine streams of water and
springs boiling up clear as crystal, and such beautiful black walnut and
white wood, and sugar maple trees, where you can make your own sugar and
cattle can live all winter on browsing the brush, while you clear the land.
So on we go, and in a two week's journey arrive at a farm three miles
southwest of our destination. But that three miles is through an unbroken
forest. It will take too long to cut a road through for the wagons, so a
tree is selected that has a forked shaped crotch, and this is, when made,
about eight feet long, with stakes at the three corners - the front rounded
up from the bottom so as to run over any small logs and dodge around trees
anywhere, and on this is piled part of the goods, with mother and Baby
Westley on top.

We came to Mill Creek, and here we had a hard time to cross. But it is
finally accomplished, although there is more water on board than is for
comfort. But mother is crying, and I don't recollect to have ever seen her
cry before. What is the matter, mother, that makes you cry? To think of
going away into this forest to begin life over again? 'Tis a hard prospect,
that is a fact. But we finally arrive at a log house, and are made very
welcome by the good people, who say we can spread our beds on the floor and
make ourselves as much at home as possible. After we had been refreshed
with a good supper and the fire played antics around the logs, sending up
ten thousand sparks to cheer us, we quite forgot the hardships of the day.

During the evening stories were told of this new country - some laughable,
some fearful. Next day was spent in selecting the eight acres selected by
Fernando. Then a place was chosen near a boiling spring, pure and cold, and
near by was running a small creek. Here they cut away the brush first, then
the trees, till enough was cleared on which to build. Then a road was made,
and the wagons brought in. There was a road through the woods to the east
and north, but none to the southwest till these wagons came in. One yoke of
oxen and wagon was sold as payment on the land. The land is on record as
the E. of the S.E. of Sec. 31, Township No. 3 South, Range No. 16 West.
The township was then without a name, but later was called Hartford, in Van
Buren County, Michigan. The oxen just sold were named Dime and Jerry; the
oxen we kept were Maje and Brady. Maje was a docile fellow that would let
anything be done with him that the occasion required. When the farm was
partly cleared father made a yankee harness for Maje and used him as a
horse to plow corn.

First Settlers of Hartford

There was at this time but four settlers in the township, namely: Ferdino
Olds, Henry Hammond, B. A. Olney and Thomas Conkling. My older brothers
have been traveling through these woods some - have been to these
neighbors' houses, and each evening as the log house is being built they
tell of what discoveries they have made during the day. These hard-beaten,
winding paths all through the forest are made by the deer. Nearly every day
some of the family have seen the white flags of the deer as they bound
away, and are soon out of sight. Last night Fernando brought home a fine
buck, and we younger chaps had to wonder at and admire his beauty. One
large tree was noticed, being but a shell of a tree, and the bark all
scratched and torn, that proved to be where bears lived. The howl of the
wolf was often heard. Then a path was commented on that was a little wider
than the deer path, but not trod so deep and hard. That proved to be an
Indian trail leading from one settlement to another.

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