"David Ruggles"

Abolitionist,businessman,and hydrotherapist,was born in

Norwich,Connecticut.He attended the Sabbath School for the poor which admitted people of color starting in 1815.In 1827 he left Connecticut for New York City where he operated a grocery store for the next four years.He then quit the grocery store business to open a bookshop in 1834.David is generally known as the first African American bookseller.While working at the bookstore he extended many publications and print promoting the abolition of slavery and in opposition to the efforts of of the American Colonization Society which promoted black settlement in Liberia.He also took on job printing,letterpress work,picture framing,and bookbinding to argument his income.In September 1835,a white anti-abolitionist mob burned his store.In 1833 he began to travel across the Northeast promoting the Emancipator and Journal of Public Morals,an abolitionist weekly.David,who wrote articles and pamphlets and gave lectures denouncing slavery and Liberian colonization,made him a figure of rising prominence in abolitionist circles in the 1830s.David was also active on the Underground Railroad from 1835-1838.In 1835 the New York Vigilance Committee was organized,he became the secretary of this rare interracial organization.His work with this committee led to his involvement in numerous cases where he helped organize the legal defense against fugitive slaves who had to fled to the North.The New York Vigilance Committee with the help of David intervened in over 300 cases of fugitive slave cases in 1836,the first year of its existence.In September 1838 David took on the case of an escaped Maryland slave,Frederick Washington Bailey.Frederick later changed his name to Frederick Douglas.By 1842 David was in such poor health that he was almost completely blind and his physician didn't think he would live more than a few weeks.Lydia Maria Child,a prominent white abolitionist,learned about David's  health and had him brought to Northampton,Massachusetts where the Northampton Association of Education and Industry,composed of abolitionist,accepted him as a member. While there trying to recover he learned about hydrotherapy.After eighteen months of hydrotherapy his health was restored.That recovery convinced others of the affective's of hydrotherapy.He was said to have the ability to diagnose aliments by his sense of touch called "cutaneous electricity.His first patients included wealthy members of Northampton Association of Education and Industry,which further enhanced his reputation as a healer.On January 1,1846 David purchased land and a building to conduct his hydropathic treatments.David became famous in the field and modestly wealthy,offering a cure for aliments that were claimed by conventional medicine to be incurable.David most famous patient was abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.He worked as a hydropathist until a recurrence of an inflamed optic nerve in his left eye in September 1849,placed him in the care of his mama & sister.Three months later David in Northampton,Massachusetts of a severe of inflammation of bowels.