Ros-Ryl: Rose through Ryland

See below for annotated biographies of American abolitionists and anti-slavery activists. Source: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography.


ROSE, Ernestine Louise, 1810-1892, born in Russia Poland as Ernestine Louise Polowsky.  Feminist and women’s rights activist, abolitionist.  Lectured on and fought for abolition, women’s rights/suffrage/human rights/equality.   (Kolmerten, 1999). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 158-159:

ROSE, ERNESTINE LOUISE SIISMONDI POTOWSKI (January 13, 1810-August4, 1892), reformer, was born in Piotrkow, Russian Poland, of Jewish parentage. Her father was a rabbi, strict in religious observances to the point of asceticism; but she, precocious and independent-minded, revolted early against orthodox Judaism. When Ernestine was sixteen her mother died, and soon afterward the daughter left home. For some years she traveled on the continent, spending considerable time in Prussia and France and interesting herself in the cause of the oppressed wherever she went. In 1832 she was in England, where she met Elizabeth Fry, Robert Dale Owen, and other congenial spirits. In 1835 she presided at the organization in England of the Association of All Classes of All Nations, which made no discrimination regarding sex, religion, race, party, or condition. At about this time she married William E. Rose, an English gentile of wealth and culture who sympathized with her views; and, coming to the United States to live, in 1836 they made their home in New York City.

Her alien race, nationality, and the deistic views she now professed roused considerable feeling against her; but this merely increased her already extensive sympathies and stimulated her zeal for the cause of all humanity, and she threw herself heartily into the various reform movements of the country. Paying her own expenses, she traveled through the eastern states and as far west as Michigan, lecturing to large audiences on religion, free schools, the science of government, abolition, and woman's rights. During the Civil War she worked with the Women's National Loyal League. Her special interest seems to have been in obtaining justice for women, and for this she worked untiringly. During the eleven years of campaigning for the married women's property bill in New York State, 1837-48, she petitioned the legislature almost annually, and five times she addressed it on the subject of the measure. Beginning in 1850, for nineteen years she attended practically every New York state and national convention relating to woman's rights; and she played an important part in many of them. As a public speaker she was pointed, logical, and impassioned (for examples see Speech of Mrs. Rose ... at the Anniversary Paine Celebration, 1850, and An Address on Woman's Rights, Delivered before the People's Sunday Meeting in Cochituate Hall ... October 19, 1851, 1851). In a time when it was easy to be led off by fanatical 'ologies and 'isms, her remarkably keen mind picked out the fundamentals and helped her colleagues to maintain a steady course. In 1869 she and her husband returned to England, where she spent most of her remaining years working, as much as broken health permitted, for the causes that she loved. She died at Brighton.

[E. C. Stanton, S. B. Anthony, and M J. Gage, History of Woman Suffrage, esp. volumes I, III (1881-87); I. H. Harper, The Life and Work, of Susan B. Anthony (3 volumes, 1898-1908); Henry Lewis, "Ernestine Rose, First Jewish Advocate of Women's Rights," Forward (N. Y.), June 19, 1927; Woman's Journal, August 13, 1892; Times (London), August 6, 1892; private information; death date from Times, ante.]

M. W.W.


ROSS, Alexander Milton, b. 1832, anti-slavery activist

(Mabee, 1970, p. 285; Rodriguez, 2007; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 327)


ROSS, Edmund Gibson, 1826-1907, U.S. Senator.  Editor, Kansas Tribune, Free State Newspaper. Although born a Democrat, Ross, in his own words, was "baptized in politics in the old Abolition party of 1844." Joining the Republican party in 1856, with the spirit of a crusader he led a colony of free-state settlers, heavily armed, to Kansas. Here he began a period of great activity against the pro-slavery party. In 1857 he and his brother bought the Topeka Kansas Tribune, and two years later founded the Kansas State Record (Topeka), which they sold in 1862. He was a member of the Wyandotte Constitutional Convention of 1859 from Wabaunsee.  

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 327-328; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, p. 175; Annals of Congress; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 18, p. 905). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 175-176:

ROSS, EDMUND GIBSON (December 7, 1826--May 8, 1907), journalist, United States senator, was born at Ashland, Ohio, the son of Sylvester F. and Cynthia (Rice) Ross. When he was about ten years old he was apprenticed to a printer at Huron, and, after learning the trade, he traveled for some years as a journeyman printer. In 1848 he married, at Sandusky, Fanny M Lathrop, the daughter of Rodney Lathrop of New York. He lived for a time at Janesville, Wis., and for four years at Milwaukee, where he was foreman of the job printing office of the Sentinel. Although born a Democrat, Ross, in his own words, was "baptized in politics in the old Abolition party of 1844." Joining the Republican party in 1856, with the spirit of a crusader he led a colony of free-state settlers, heavily armed, to Kansas, driving an ox team all the way. Here he began a period of great activity against the pro-slavery party. In 1857 he and his brother bought the Topeka Kansas Tribune, and two years later founded the Kansas State Record (Topeka), which they sold in 1862. He was a member of the Wyandotte Constitutional Convention of 1859 from Wabaunsee. In 1862 he enlisted in the 11th Kansas Regiment and later recruited a company and became its captain. A brave and dashing soldier, he was promoted to major in 1864, and served on the Missouri border until the war ended. In 1865 he became editor of the Lawrence Tribune.

The following year he was appointed to the United States Senate to succeed James H. Lane [q.v.], who, mentally deranged, partly because of criticism of his support of President Johnson, had committed suicide. Interestingly enough, Ross was one of his critics. The appointment was popular and in 1867 the legislature elected him to fill out the term. He entered the Senate an intense Radical and an earnest opponent of Johnson. He voted for all the radical measures of reconstruction, including the tenure-of-office act, of which, however, he was quite doubtful. When Johnson removed Stanton in January 1868, Ross voted for the Senate resolution declaring the act illegal. After the President's impeachment, however, he was insistent that Johnson should have a fair trial and voted on many questions with the known opponents of conviction, notably in connection with the admission of evidence for the defense. The rumor spread among the Radicals that Ross was "shaky," and he was continual1y importuned by them, flooded with letters and telegrams from Kansas. At this time he rather favored conviction, but the character of the pressure upon him made him doubtful. In answer to a telegram of instruction from Kansas, he replied: "I have taken an oath to do impartial justice ... and trust I shall have the courage and the honesty to vote according to the dictates of my judgment and for the highest good of the country" (Scribner's, post, p. 521). His final conclusion to vote against conviction for lack of evidence, was reached in face of the belief that he would thereby secure his own political destruction. He said later: "I almost literally looked down into my own g rave. Friends, position, fortune, everything that makes life desirable to an ambitious man, were about to be swept away by the breath of my mouth, perhaps forever" (Ibid., p. 524). The burst of bitter denunciation which followed the fir st vote fell most heavily on Ross. He was a "poltroon and traitor," it was said; "littleness had borne its legitimate fruit"; "Kansas repudiates you as she does all perjurers and skunks," were the words of a telegram from his home state (Dewitt; post, p. 545). Charges of corruption were made and every species of pressure known to politicians was exerted. Ross "bore the ordeal with the fortitude of a stoic and the inscrutability of a sphinx" (Ibid., p. 574), and again voted "not guilty." Immediately thereafter he demanded an investigation of the charges against him, but none was ever made. Several times, however, he defended his position in the Senate (Congressional Globe, 40 Congress, 2 Session, pp. 2598-99, 4513-17). During the remainder of his term, which ended in 1871, he was an independent. He favored the absolute repeal of the tenure-of-office act, and supported the Fifteenth Amendment although he believed that Congress had power to grant negro suffrage.

At the conclusion of his term he returned to Kansas and published a weekly newspaper at Coffeyville. In November 1879 he began to edit the Lawrence Standard and in February of the following year bought the Leavenworth Press and merged the two. He left the Republican party in 1872, partly because of its treatment of him, but also because of his dislike of the protective system and the character of Grant's administration. For the rest of his life he was a Democrat, although he violently opposed Bryan and free silver. In 1876 he was a Democratic candidate for elector and in 1880 for governor, but was badly beaten. Two years later he moved to New Mexico and became again a journeyman printer. Cleveland appointed him governor of the territory in May 1885, and he filled the position for four stormy years of struggle with what he asserted was a corrupt ring, antagonizing Democrats as well as the Republican legislature. In 1893 he was an unsuccessful candidate for reappointment. He spent the rest of his life in Albuquerque. Shortly before his death a messenger brought him greetings from the governor and legislature of Kansas, expressing appreciation of his conduct 'in the impeachment trial. He was utterly fearless, honest, and of good ability, but lacked tact, was brusque and headstrong, and, in the words of an opponent, "rejoiced in opposition." Two sons and three daughters survived him.

[Information concerning Ross himself appears in his History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson (1896) and in articles by him in Forum, July 1895, and Scribner's Magazine, April 1882. See also D. M. Dewitt, Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson (1903); D. W. Wilder, The Annals of Kan. (1886) Trans. Kan. State Hist Society, volumes I, II (1881); R" E Twitchell The Leading Facts of New Mexican History, II (1911) 496- 502; Albuquerque Morning Journal, May 9; 10, 19~7.]

J.G.de R.H.


ROSS, James, 1762-1847, U.S. Senator 1974, lawyer, helped escaped slaves whom he represented in Philadelphia. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 329; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, p. 178; “Port Folio,” Philadelphia, PA, 1816; Annals of Congress; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 18, p. 914). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, p. 178:

ROSS, JAMES (July 12, 1762-November 27, 1847), lawyer, United States senator, son of Joseph and Jane (Graham) Ross, was born near Delta, York County, Pennsylvania. His grandfather, Hugh Ross, of Scotch ancestry, came to America from northern Ireland about 1723. James studied the classics at Slate Ridge Presbyterian Church school and at an academy in Pequea, Pennsylvania. At the age of eighteen he was induced by the Reverend John McMillan, a close friend of the Ross family, to go to western Pennsylvania, where he taught Latin and Greek in McMillan's academy near Canonsburg (now Washington and Jefferson College, Washington, Pennsylvania). He had originally intended to enter the ministry, but while he was at Canonsburg, Hugh Henry Brackenridge [q. v. ], a Pittsburgh lawyer, persuaded him to take up law, and in 1782 encouraged him to continue his studies at Philadelphia. He returned to Washington County in 1784 and was admitted to the bar. Specializing in land cases, he soon acquired a large practice, and in 1795 moved to Pittsburgh. He was attorney for President Washington's estates in western Pennsylvania and numbered among his clients prominent and wealthy business men.

His first connection with state politics was as a member of the Pennsylvania constitutional convention in 1789-90. A member of the committee that drafted the new frame of government, he was a stanch Federalist and attracted attention by his zealous advocacy of a clause for religious liberty similar to that in the federal Constitution. During the Whiskey Insurrection (1794) he used his influence to restrain popular fury against the federal government. President Washington appointed him one of the federal commissioners to treat with the insurgents and his efforts were in a large measure responsible for the amicable settlement of the uprising, and the saving his friend Brackenridge from prosecution for treason. In 1794 the Pennsylvania  legislature elected him to the United States Senate in place of Albert Gallatin [q.v.], who was disqualified on account of the residence requirement. Reelected in 1797, he served until 1803, and in 1799 was president pro tempore of the Senate. A firm believer in Hamiltonian ideas and policies, he worked diligently, though unsuccessfully, in 1800, to keep Pennsylvania in the Federalist ranks and to insure a national victory for his party by urging the passage of an act under which the legality of electoral votes for president and vice-president would have been decided by a grand committee composed of the chief justice and six members from each house of Congress. Under the Republican administration he defended Federalist legislation against Jeffersonian attacks, notably the excise law and the Judiciary Act of 1801, asserting that the repeal of the latter would erect Congress into "a complete tyranny" and render the judiciary totally subservient to Congress (Annals of Congress, 7 Congress, 1 Session, p. 166). A series of resolutions introduced by him on February 16, 1803, following Spain's withdrawal of the right of deposit at New Orleans and designed to embarrass the administration and provoke war with Spain, demanded the immediate seizure of the mouth of the Mississippi River, the fortification of its banks, and then negotiations for navigation advantages. In 1799, 1802, and 1808 he was Federalist candidate for governor of Pennsylvania, but the high tide of Jeffersonianism, his liberal religious views, and his refusal to canvass the state conspired in each instance to defeat him. I7rom 1816 to 1833 he was president of the Pittsburgh select council, but otherwise he was not active in politics after 1808, his law practice and land speculations, which proved highly profitable, engaging his attention. He was distinguished for his polished manner, his legal learning, and his forensic ability, and displayed an independence of judgment which sometimes cost him political preferment. His wife, whom he married on January 13, 1791, was Ann, daughter of George Woods, of Bedford, Pennsylvania. He died at Allegheny City, now a part of Pittsburgh, survived by one son.

[J. I. Brownson, The Life and Times of Senator James Ross (1910); Boyd Crumrine, History of Washington County, Pennsylvania (1882); Thomas Mellon, "Reminiscences of the Hon. James Ross," in Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine, July 1920; Annals of Congress, 1794-1803; Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, XIII (1889), 4; Biog. Directory American Congress (1928); Daily Morning Post (Pittsburgh), November 30, 1847.]

J. H.P.


ROWLANDS, William (October 10, 1807- October 27, 1866), clergyman and editor,

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, p. 201:

ROWLANDS, WILLIAM (October 10, 1807- October 27, 1866), clergyman and editor, was born in London, the eldest of the four children of Thomas and Mary (Jones) Rowlands. Both parents were natives of central Wales. After the death of his father, a thrifty milk dealer, in 1814, and of his mother five years later, William, the only surviving child, was cared for by relatives in Wales. If his formal education ended after four years of study at Ystradmeurig and Llangeitho, he had by then gained command of both English and Welsh. From 1824 to 1829 he taught school at Merthyr Tidfil and Pontypool, meanwhile preaching occasionally in Calvinistic. Methodist chapels. He was not ordained, however, until 1832. Having come into a small inheritance, he gave up teaching in 1829 and bought a printing establishment, where, among other things, he issued a monthly Sunday-school paper of which he was editor. He married on August 25, 1829, Ann Jacob of Cardiff, whose substantial dowry and his own sanguine temperament led him to over expand his business activities. By the autumn of 1833 he was bankrupt. Misfortune crowded upon him; the church forbade his preaching; in September 1834 he lost his wife, and, eighteen months later, his only child. His reinstatement in the ministry was but partial solace for all his troubles. He was obliged to begin his life anew and America seemed to offer the fairest future.
Rowlands arrived in New York in the summer of 1836. Not yet thirty, vigorous and energetic, he was conscious of his ability both as preacher and as editor. At once he began preaching to the Welsh community in New York City. Here and in Oneida County, New York, he ministered for the rest of his life save for a two-year pastorate at Scranton, Pennsylvania (1856-58). Less eloquent than some of his colleagues, he gained an abiding reputation among the Welsh-Americans for the clarity, the vigor, and the deep sincerity of his preaching. In his pastoral work he was equally successful, for his quick sympathy and ready understanding won him the confidence and affection of his parishioners. His greatest influence, however, was exerted through the religious press. In 1836 no Welsh newspaper or periodicals existed in America. Believing there was need for a religious publication among his countrymen, in January 1838 he issued the first number of Y Cyfaill ("The Friend"), a monthly periodical which survived until December 1933. Rowlands' intention to make his paper independent in both religion and politics proved impossible. Soon the  Congregationalists and the Baptists founded religious periodicals of their own and Y Cyfaill then became the accepted organ of the Calvinistic Methodists. A Democrat who joined the Republicans only in 1861, Rowlands rigorously excluded partisan politics from his paper. Though opposed to slavery, he refused to support abolition, which Robert Everett [q.v.] was urging in Y Cenhadwr. He condemned the liquor trade roundly and continuously. Though Y Cyfaill in Rowlands' lifetime never reached a circulation of two thousand, its influence was deep and widespread. Through it he shaped the thinking of a large proportion of the Welsh-Americans.

Even his active work as pastor and editor did not exhaust his energies. Besides numerous pamphlets, including a short history of his denomination in America, he published a volume of sermons: Damniegy Mab Afradlon (1860). He became a life member of the American Tract Society (1851) and a life director of the American Bible Society (1852). On May 17, 1838, he married Catherine Parry of Remsen, New York. By her he had thirteen children, of whom only five survived their father. His indefatigable activity continued almost unabated until his death in Utica.

[Howell Powell, Cofiant-William Rowlands (Utica, 1 873); biog. material scattered through the first thirty volumes of Y Cyfaill; R. D. Thomas, Hanes Cymry America (Utica, 1872); Utica Daily Observer, October 27, 1866.]

P D. E.


RUBLEE, Horace (August 19, 1829-October 19, 1896), editor and diplomat. His political activities began with the movement against the extension of slavery that led to the birth of the Republican party. At the first state convention of that party, held in Madison on July 13, 1854, Rublee was one of the secretaries.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 213-214:

RUBLEE, HORACE (August 19, 1829-October 19, 1896), editor and diplomat, was born in Berkshire, Franklin County, Vermont, the son of Alvah and Martha (Kent) Rublee. Attracted by reports of rich farming land in the Middle West, his father journeyed to Wisconsin in 1839 and settled at Sheboygan, where his family joined him the following year. The boy's early education was obtained in the district schools of Vermont and Wisconsin. Lacking the rugged physique necessary for his father's occupations, lumbering and farming, he taught school near his home until, at the age of twenty, he decided to go to college. In 1850 he entered the University of Wisconsin, then in its first year as a preparatory school, housed in one. small building, with a faculty of one teacher. While attending the university he supported himself by setting type on one of the Madison newspapers, but his constitution was not equal to the strain of study and work, and he was compelled to withdraw from college on account of poor health. Returning to his home in Sheboygan, he again taught in a district school. He began his newspaper work by reporting the sessions of the state legislature during 1852 and 1853 for the Wisconsin Argus, a Democratic weekly paper that published a daily edition while the legislature was in session. In the spring of 1853, during the temporary absence of its editor, Rublee became editorial writer on the Wisconsin State Journal, a Madison daily, established the previous year by David Atwood [q.v.]. The following year Rublee bought a half-interest in the paper, which he retained until he went abroad in the diplomatic service fifteen years later.

His political activities began with the movement against the extension of slavery that led to the birth of the Republican party. At the first state convention of that party, held in Madison on July 13, 1854, Rublee was one of the secretaries. During 1856-57 he was state librarian. In 1856 or 1857 he married Kate Hopkins of Washington County, New York, one of whose brothers, James C. Hopkins [q.v.], became United States judge for the western district of Wisconsin. From 1859 to 1869, Rublee served as chairman of the Wisconsin Republican state committee, and in 1868 was a delegate to the Republican National Convention that nominated General Grant for the presidency.

President Grant appointed him minister to Switzerland in 1869, a post that he held for seven years. Studious in his tastes, he acquired a considerable knowledge of the German language and literature during his residence in Switzerland. After resigning his diplomatic position, he returned to Wisconsin in 1877 and again became chairman of the Republican state committee. When the Republican state convention adopted a weak plank on "Greenbackism," Rublee, as chairman of the state committee with the support of some of the other Republican leaders, issued an address to the Republican voters demanding the resumption of specie payments. He carried the Republicans to victory on this issue.

During 1877 he contributed articles to the Evening Wisconsin, the leading Republican evening newspaper in Milwaukee. He went to Boston in 1879 to act as temporary editor of the Daily Advertiser, but, although urged to remain. in journalism in the East, soon decided to return to Wisconsin. In 1881 he organized a company to purchase the Daily Milwaukee News, a Democratic morning paper. With Rublee, a stanch Republican, as editor, its name was changed to the Republican and News. The following year the company bought the Milwaukee Sentinel, then the oldest as well as the most important morning paper in the state. It was in his connection with the Sentinel, from 1883 until he died in 1896, that Rublee won distinction as editor and editorial writer. He made it more than a party organ; it was the leading newspaper of the commonwealth, and his editorials were quoted by other newspapers both within and without the state. At his death he was survived by two sons. 

[A. M. Thomson, A Political History of Wis. (1902); The Columbian Biog. Dictionary ... Wisconsin Vol. (1895); H.P. Myrick, in Proceedings Wis. Press Asso., 1897; Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the U. S., 1870-76; Milwaukee Sentinel and Milwaukee Journal, October 19, 1896.]

W. G. B.


RUFFNER, Henry (January 16, 1790-December17, 1861), Presbyterian clergyman, educator, author, his Address to the People of West Virginia ... Showing that Slavery is Injurious to the Public Welfare, and that it May be Gradually Abolished, Without Detriment to the Rights and Interests of Slaveholders, by a Slaveholder of West Virginia (1847). In it he argued for confinement of slavery to the region east of the Blue Ridge and its gradual abolition there on broad grounds of public policy. This "Ruffner Pamphlet" became important politically, especially in 1859.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 217-218:

RUFFNER, HENRY (January 16, 1790-December17, 1861), Presbyterian clergyman, educator, author, was born in Shenandoah County, Virginia, son of David and Ann (Brumbach) Ruffner. Having come to the Valley in 1739, the Ruffners a German-Swiss people, big-bodied and heavy fisted-moved on in 1796 to the wild Kanawha country, where, also, they bought land, started manufacturing, and helped build schools and churches. Prepared at Dr. McElhenney's Academy nearby, Henry, in 1813, graduated from Washington College, Lexington, Virginia. After a year of theology and a year of travel he was licensed to preach and returned for mission work in the Kanawha country. On March 31, 1819, he married Sarah; daughter of Capt. William Lyle, a farmer living near Lexington.

For thirty years thereafter he was identified with Washington College, first as teacher (thrice acting as president), and then (1836-48) as president and teacher. Under him the school took on the characteristics of a modern college, especially architecturally, though competition with the new Virginia Military Academy kept its numbers small. Meantime, his unusual energy was finding other outlets. From 1819 to 1831 he preached regularly at the Timber Ridge Church. At the educational convention in Lexington in 1842 he was the moving spirit and submitted "'the most valuable document' on general education issued in Virginia since the early days of Thomas Jefferson, viz, an elaborate plan for the organization of an entire educational system of public instruction' " (Ambler, post, p. 277, quoting the United States Commissioner of Education). From 1840 to 1847 he was preparing "The Early History of Washington College" (Washing ton and Lee Historical Papers, volume I, 1890), in which appear his views on "the general management of literary institutions and the subject of liberal education." Out of a debate in the Franklin Literary Society of Lexington on the advisability of dividing Virginia into two states at the Blue Ridge, grew his Address to the People of West Virginia ... Showing that Slavery is Injurious to the Public Welfare, and that it May be Gradually Abolished, Without Detriment to the Rights and Interests of Slaveholders, by a Slaveholder of West Virginia (1847). In it he argued for confinement of slavery to the region east of the Blue Ridge and its gradual abolition there on broad grounds of public policy. This "Ruffner Pamphlet" became important politically, especially in 1859.

With the reluctant consent of the trustees, Ruffner left Washington College in 1848 for the Kanawha mountains. There he hoped to recover fortune and health at farming and mining; but after a few years he returned to preaching, this time in what is now Malden, W. Virginia. Meanwhile, as "literary recreations," he had written and published "Judith Bensaddi," a romance which appeared in revised form in the Southern Literary Messenger, July 1839, with the statement that the first version had been published in a Philadelphia periodical ten years before; two Calvinistic treatises, A Discourse on the Duration of Future Punishment (1823) and Against Universalism (1833); and The Fathers of the Desert (2 volumes, 1850). As an exponent of its energy and hard sense and of its views on slavery and education, ante-helium western Virginia had no better representative than Henry Ruffner. Two of his four children survived him, one of whom was William Henry Ruffner [q.v.].

[William Henry Ruffner, "History of Washington College, now Washington and Lee University," in Washington and Lee History Papers, nos. 5, 6 (1895, 1904), a continuation of Henry Ruffner's Early History of Washington College; C. H. Ambler, Sectionalism in Virginia (1910); Southern Lit. Messenger, December 1838, January-April 1839, containing his "Cincinnati Address" and his "Notes on a Tour from Virginia to Tenn. .... 1838."]

C. C. P.


RUGGLES, David, 1810-1849, New York, free African American, journalist, publisher, editor, anti-slavery activist and abolitionist leader.  Agent for Emancipator and Journal of Public Morals of the American Anti-Slavery Society.  Founded Mirror of Liberty, first Black magazine.  Active in the New York Committee of Vigilance and the Underground Railroad, which aided fugitive slaves.  Advocate of Free Produce movement.  Wrote pamphlet, “The Extinguisher.”  Contributed articles to abolitionist newspapers, The Emancipator and The Liberator. 

(Dumond, 1961, p. 340; Hodges, 2010; Mabee, 1970, pp. 84-85, 107-108, 113-114, 278, 285, 397n1, 398n20, 415n16; Rodriguez, 2007, p. 45; Sorin, 1971, pp. 34, 84n, 87, 113; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 9, p. 624)


RUSH, Dr. Benjamin, 1746-1813, Pennsylvania, founding father of the United States, physician, author, humanitarian, educator, opponent of slavery.  Wrote “An Address to the Inhabitants of the British Settlements in America Upon Slave Keeping,” an anti-slavery pamphlet published in 1773.  Secretary and member of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, 1787.  Rush wrote: “Slavery is so foreign to the human mind, that the moral faculties, as well as those of the understanding are debased, and rendered torpid by it.  All of the vices which are charged upon the negroes in the southern colonies and West Indies… are the genuine offspring of slavery, and serve as an argument to prove they [African Americans] were not intended by Providence for it.”  

(Basker, 2005, pp. 33, 80, 81, 92, 101, 217, 223-228, 240, 308, 316; Bruns, 1977, pp. 79, 224-246, 269, 304-306, 325, 358, 376, 384, 491, 510, 514; Drake, 1950, pp. 85, 94, 115, 119; Dumond, 1961, pp. 20, 52-53, 87; Locke, 1901, pp. 48, 52, 55, 56, 58, 59, 62; Mabee, 1970, p. 270; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 21, 25-26, 156, 253, 456; Zilversmit, 1967, pp. 90, 94-95, 169, 224-225; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 349; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 227-231; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 707-710; Annals of Congress; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 19, p. 72). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 227-230:

RUSH, BENJAMIN (December 24, 1745 o.s.-April 19, 1813), physician, patriot, humanitarian, was born on a plantation near Philadelphia, in the agricultural community of Byberry, the fourth of the seven children of John and Susanna (Hall) Harvey Rush. He was descended from John Rush, a yeoman from Oxfordshire, who came to Byberry in 1683. His father, a gunsmith and farmer, died when Benjamin was but five years old. At eight he was sent to school with an uncle by marriage, Samuel Finley [q.v.], and then to the College of New Jersey (now Princeton), where he received the A.B. degree in 1760. Upon returning to Philadelphia Rush first thought of studying law, but changed his mind in favor of medicine. He was a student under Dr. John Redman from 1761 to 1766 and, in addition to this apprenticeship, attended the first lectures of Dr. William Shippen and Dr. John Morgan in the College of Philadelphia.

During these years he displayed an interest in public affairs, was swayed by Whitefield's preaching, and aroused to youthful patriotism by the Stamp Act controversy; but revivals and politics were forgotten in the zest of professional adventure. On Dr. Redman's advice, he sailed in I766 to complete his medical education at the University of Edinburgh. There he sat under such masters as Monro, Secundus, Joseph Black, and John Gregory, and became the friend and disciple of the great William Cullen. He also found time in the society of fellow students to doubt and debate all things, and so became something of a republican and a philosopher as well as a physician. He received his doctor's degree in June 1768, and immediately went to London for further training in St. Thomas's Hospital. In London he was on friendly terms with Benjamin Franklin, in whose society he learned, among many things, the art of being agreeable.

After a short visit to Paris, Rush returned to Philadelphia in 1769, and at once began to practise medicine. Although he claimed to be without influential friends, he had already arranged an appointment as professor of chemistry in the College of Philadelphia, the first such chair established in the colonies. While holding it Rush published the first American text in that subject, A Syllabus of a Course of Lectures on Chemistry (1770, reissued 1773). His practice grew, at first largely among the poor; but within five years he had a very fair income. Rush attracted attention by his unusual ability and training, and also as the practitioner of a new "system." Instead of that of the famous Dr. Hermann Boerhaave, he preached the system of his master, Cullen, with such a scorn for the "old school" that he alienated many of his colleagues. He began writing almost at once, and in 1772 published anonymously one of the first American works on personal hygiene, Sermons to Gentlemen upon Temperance and Exercise (London, 1772).

Meanwhile he had become a member of the American Philosophical Society and cultivated other than purely professional interests. In 1773 he published An Address to the Inhabitants of the British Settlements in America, upon Slave-keeping, and in 1774 helped to organize the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery. Maintaining his interest in the quarrel between the colonies and the mother country, he wrote articles for the local press, and associated with such patriot leaders as Thomas Paine, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. When war began he offered his services in the patriot cause. While waiting for action, he was married, on January II, 1776, to Julia Stockton, eldest daughter of Richard Stockton of Princeton. In June he was elected to the Provincial Conference, in which he was a leader in declaring for independence, and a month later was made a member of the Continental Congress. He thus became a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

In April 1777 he was appointed surgeon-general of the armies of the Middle Department. Finding the medical service in a deplorable condition he protested to General Washington, accusing Dr. Shippen, the director general, of maladministration. Washington referred the matter to Congress, which decided in favor of Shippen, and Rush resigned in consequence. Washington's defeats near Philadelphia, in addition to his own personal experiences, now led Rush to question the general's ability; and caused him to be associated indirectly with the Conway Cabal (Rush Manuscripts, XXIX, 136, Ridgway Library). He finally wrote an anonymous letter, to Governor Patrick Henry of Virginia, urging that Washington be replaced by Gates or Conway. Henry forwarded this to Washington, who recognized Rush's excellent hand and accused him of personal disloyalty. (Rush's letter, dated Yorktown, January 12, 1778, is printed in John Marshall, The Life of Washington, 2 ed., 1832, volume I, note 12, pp. 29, 30.)

This affair ended Rush's military career, and he returned to his practice in Philadelphia. In the new University of the State of Pennsylvania, opened in 1778, he began to deliver lectures in 1780. In 1783, he became a member of the staff of the Pennsylvania Hospital and served in that capacity for the rest of his life. Here he saw something of the needs of the sick and the poor, and this aroused again his interest in social reform. Stirred, moreover, by the idealism of the Revolution, he now became a sponsor of the various ameliorative movements which were to remould America in the ensuing century. He established the first free dispensary in the country (1786), became president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery (1803), condemned public and capital punishments, and demanded real "penitentiaries" by way of prison reform. His advocacy of temperance was so effective that he has been formally recognized as the "instaurator" of the American temperance movement. His republican enthusiasm led him to favor an improved education for girls, a comprehensive system of schools culminating in a national university, and a theory of education which gave greater freedom to children and encouraged their training in science and utilitarian subjects rather than in the traditional disciplines. Practising what he preached, he persuaded the Presbyterians to found Dickinson College (1783), and served as one of its trustees. Most of his essays on social reform appeared in magazines of Philadelphia, and were later collected and published in 1798 under the title of Essays, Literary, Moral and Philosophical. While these were extravagantly praised by contemporaries as masterpieces of prose, they have long since been subjected to a similarly extreme neglect by American readers.

For a brief period in 1787, Rush once more resorted to the newspapers in the cause of nationalism, this time to urge the acceptance of the new federal Constitution. As a result he was elected to the Pennsylvania ratifying convention, in which he and James Wilson led the successful movement for adoption. In 1789 these two men inaugurated a campaign which secured for the state a more liberal and effective constitution- the last achievement of Rush's political career. His only direct reward was a later appointment by President Adams as treasurer of the United States Mint (1797-1813). After 1789 Rush devoted himself primarily to his profession. The College of Philadelphia, now reestablished, was merged in 1791 with the University of the State of Pennsylvania to form the University of Pennsylvania. Since the medical faculties of both schools were retained, there was some shifting of academic chairs. Rush had succeeded, upon the death of Dr. Morgan in 1789, to the chair of theory and practice in the college; in January I 792 he became professor of the institutes of medicine and clinical practice in the new university, and in 1796 succeeded Dr. Adam Kuhn as professor of theory and practice as well. In addition to the university connection, he was associated with those who organized the Philadelphia College of Physicians in 1787, although he resigned from this body in the course of the first yellow-fever controversy.

Three aspects of Rush's medical work deserve attention: his "system" of theory and practice; his specific contributions to medical science; and his influence as a teacher. He had inherited from Cullen a complicated nosology, a distrust of natural healing powers, and a corresponding confidence in the use of special remedies for each species of disease. He probably also acquired from Cullen, as well as from the general medical philosophy of the day, the view that all theory should be organized, on rational principles, into a "system" that would make practice simple and intelligent (William Cullen, First Lines of the Practice of Physic, 1796, pp. 9-52). Cullen had urged that each generation formulate new systems, in order to keep pace with advancing scientific knowledge; and during the eighties two of his ablest pupils, John Brown of Edinburgh and Rush, began to take him at his word. It happened that Cullen's pathology had emphasized the role of the nervous system and nervous energy, rather than the old conceptions concerning the humors and solids. Exaggerating this point, Brown concluded that all diseases were due either to an excess or to a lack of nervous stimulation, and thus indicated either "depleting" or stimulating remedies (John Brown, The Elements of Medicine, 1788, passim). This view soon had a wide following in Europe, and Rush in America was so impressed that he decided to carry "Brunonianism" one step further to its logical conclusion. It is impossible to describe his system briefly without over-simplification, but the essential principle was the reduction of Brown's two types of disease to one. All diseases, he decided, were due to one "proximate" cause, a state of excessive excitability or spasm in the blood vessels, and hence in most cases called for the one treatment of "depletion" through bleeding and purging. Thus, as he himself declared, there was after all but one disease and one type of treatment (Manuscript Lectures on the Practice of Physic, 1796, I, Lecture No. 31, University of Pennsylvania Library). This conception was so simple, and so completely the antithesis of the nosology in which he had been trained, that it came to hold for his speculative mind all the fascination of an ultimate panacea. It was, literally, too good to be true, but he confidently proclaimed it when the initial volume of his Medical Inquiries and Observations was published in 1789.

The system was soon pronounced fanciful by various critics, who also declared that its author's fondness for depletion led him to dangerous extremes in practice. He seems to have averaged about ten ounces in ordinary bleedings, but often took more, and was actually willing to remove as much as four-fifths of all the blood in the body (Medical Inquiries and Observations, 3 ed., 1809, volume IV, 353). Rush scorned the first criticism on the ground that reasoning and deduction were essentials in scientific method, and claimed that his treatment succeeded in practice. The real test of this claim seemed to have come in the epidemic of yellow fever which descended upon Philadelphia in 1793. Rush worked with desperation and devotion for three months, while several thousand of his fellow citizens, including members of his own household, died of the "yellow monster." His treatment, he declared, was practically always effective when employed promptly. But the only supporting data he offered were aggressive and dogmatic assertions as to his diagnoses and cures. He wrote a justly famous account of the epidemic as a whole, but failed to keep an exact record of his own cases. In a word, while correct in his view that hypotheses have their place in medicine, he was largely blind to his obligation to check them against the facts. Vital statistics of a sort were already available but he did not use them. The way was thus open for a lay critic, William Cobbett, to point out the correlation between the increasing employment of Rush's treatment and the increasing mortality rate--the more bleeding, the more deaths! The doctor's system, Cobbett observed, is "one of the great discoveries ... which have contributed to the depopulation of the earth" (The Rush-Light, New York, February 28, 1800, p. 49). The pamphleteer's motives were not above suspicion, and Rush's treatment was not the only variable involved; yet it was indeed impossible to reconcile his claims with the stark fact of the mortality tables. He was not guilty of deliberate misrepresentation, but rather the victim of  a certain credulity about diagnoses and cures which characterized much of his work.

The epidemic had several immediate effects, so far as Rush was concerned. His view that its "remote" cause was unsanitary conditions antagonized many citizens, and particularly those doctors who ascribed the disease to importation and contagion. Both this issue and that relating to treatments, were taken into the newspapers, and Rush again found himself the center of controversy. Nevertheless, his published accounts of the epidemic, and of those which followed it, won for him recognition by several European governments and learned societies. The chief essay is An Account of the Bilious Remitting Yellow Fever, as it Appeared in the City of Philadelphia, in the Year 1793 (1794).

It has been remarked that Rush was an observant man, but not a good observer. His shortcomings as a systematic observer have been noted; it remains to point out that he was indeed an observant man in special fields of medicine. There is reason to believe that he was the pioneer worker in experimental physiology in the United States. He was the first American to write on cholera infantum, and the first to recognize focal infection in the teeth. He was probably the first to advocate the study of veterinary medicine. His repudiation of current nosology was valuable, in that he strove to reduce the confusion of treatments associated therewith-he favored purging the materia medica as well as  his patients. Most notable were his contributions to psychiatry, made while working with the insane at the Pennsylvania Hospital, where he inculcated a scientific and fairly humane attitude toward this class of patients. His famous work, Medical Inquiries and Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind (1812) shows some appreciation of what would today be known as mental healing and even of psycho-analysis. He was, finally, the first medical man in the country to achieve a general literary reputation.

Rush, therefore, was probably the best-known American physician of his day, though his reputation as a scientist was exaggerated because of his popularity as a teacher. He was hated by his enemies, but there is overwhelming evidence that he was admired by his students to a degree rare in the history of any of the professions His classes grew ever larger, and his fame spread throughout the country, especially in the South and West. His son James declared that while before 1790 Rush's classes numbered from sixteen to forty-five annually, by 1812 he had had 2872 in his medical classes, and, including private students, 3000 in his lifetime (cited by Goodman, post, pp. 132, 162). No wonder he contributed, more than any other one man, to the establishment of Philadelphia as the leading American center of medical training during the first half of the nineteenth century.

Rush was well and active until a few days before his death on April 19, 1813. He was buried in Christ's Church graveyard in Philadelphia and here his wife was buried thirty-five years later. Of his thirteen children six sons, among them James and Richard Rush [qq.v.], and three daughters survived him. He died a professing Christian, but without strict denominational attachments. He was at various times a member of the Episcopalian and the Presbyterian churches, accepted the Universalists' view of salvation, and has been claimed by the Unitarians. In fact his education so broadened his mind as to destroy any spirit of denominationalism, without weakening a generally pious outlook which was the result of early training. His piety, however, was complacent and inconsistent at times; and his occasional use of theological arguments in medical reasoning was a survival of medievalism in method entirely foreign to his abler contemporaries. The truth is that Rush had an able and versatile, but not a fundamentally critical mind.

[The majority of Rush's manuscripts are in the Ridgway Branch of the Philadelphia Library Co.; others are in the Pennsylvania Historical Society, the University of Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia College of Physicians, the Girard Estate, the N Y. Academy of Medicine, the New York Historical Society, the Library of Congress, and in the private possession of Mr. Lynford Biddle of Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia. Important printed sources are: E. C. Burnett, ed., Letters of Members of the Continental Congress, volumes I-III (1921-1926), containing selections from his diary and correspondence; A Memorial Containing Travels through Life or Sundry Incidents in the Life of Dr. Benjamin Rush Written by, Himself (1905); H. G. Good, Benjamin Rush and His Services to American Education (1918); sketches in various collections of American medical biography, of which the most detailed is that by Samuel. Jackson in S. D. Gross, ed., Lives of Eminent American Physicians and Surgeons of the Nineteenth Century (1861), pp. 2-85; and the most reliable, 'that by Francis Packard, in H. A Kelly and W L. Burrage, eds., Dictionary of American Medical Biography (1928); the favorable essay of David Ramsay, An Eulogium upon Benjamin Rush, M.D. (1813); the critical essay by Victor Robinson, "The Myth of Benjamin Rush," Medical Life, September 1929, volume XXXVI, pp. 445-48. A list of Rush's publications and a general bibliography are in Good, pp, 259-75; and an almost complete list is in the Index Catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon-General's Office, U.S. A., XII (1891), pp. 398-400. N. G. Goodman, Benjamin Rush, Physician and Citizen, 1746- 1813 (1934), the latest and most complete study, is well documented and contains an excellent bibliography. A death notice appeared in Poulson's American Daily Advertiser, April 21, 1813.]

R.H. S-k.


RUSSWURM, John Brown, 1799-1851, African American, anti-slavery newspaper editor.  Co-editor of Freedom’s Journal, with Samuel Cornish.  Became senior editor in 1827.  Freedom’s Journal was the first newspaper in the United States to be owned, edited and published by African Americans.  Later, editor of Rights of All. 

(Dumond, 1961, p. 329; Sagarin, 1970; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 253-254; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 19, p. 117.). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, p. 253:

RUSSWURM, JOHN BROWN (October 1, 1799-June 17, 1851), first superintendent of public schools in Liberia and governor of the Colony of Maryland, was born at Port Antonio, Jamaica. He was the son of a white American and a colored woman. When his father left the island, he put the boy in school in Canada. The father afterward married a white woman in Maine, who learned of the existence of the boy, then called John Brown. She insisted that he join the family and assume his father's name. After the death of the father and her remarriage, she still cared carefully for the boy. He was sent to school in Maine and eventually entered Bowdoin College, where he graduated in 1826. He was reported by his classmates to have been a young man of sound intelligence, a great reader with a special fondness for history and politics (Cleaveland, post, p. 354). He was probably the first person of acknowledged African descent to finish an American college course. He settled in New York City, where in 1827 he established one of the first colored papers in the United States, Freedom's Journal. His paper espoused the abolitionists' cause and opposed emigration to Africa; but after a time he changed his mind and said: "We consider it mere waste of words to talk of ever enjoying citizenship in this country" (African Repository, December 1851, p. 357).

Thereupon, he emigrated to Liberia in 1829 to become superintendent of public schools and to carry on trade. From 1830 to 1834 he acted as colonial secretary, editing and publishing at the same time the Liberia Herald. In 1836 he was appointed governor of the Maryland Colony at Cape Palmas, a position he held until his death in 1851. The Maryland Colony was established under the auspices of the Maryland State Colonization Society. The territory there was obtained through James Hall, a friend and schoolmate of Russwurm. The president of the society bore the testimony as to how well Russwurm discharged his difficult duty in averting the perils of the surrounding savage tribes, in quieting the controversies of civilized and angry white men, and resisting unreasonable popular clamor among the colonists (Cleaveland, post, pp. 353-54). Although the Maryland Colony was distinct from Liberia, Russwurm worked in careful collaboration with Joseph J. Roberts [q. v.] of Liberia and was instrumental in the final union of the two colonies. Even before an actual union, they acted together in foreign affairs and established a common customs tariff. Russwurm encouraged agriculture and trade, built a stone jail that could also be used as a fort, took a census in 1843, and established a court with presiding justices. He married a daughter of Lieutenant-Governor McGill of Monrovia and at his death in 1851 left four children.

[African Repository, esp. July 1846, November, Dec. 1851; Nehemiah Cleaveland and A. S. Packard, Hist, of Bowdoin College (1882); General Catalog of Bowdoin College (1912); Archibald Alexander, A History of Colonization on the Western Coast of Africa (1846); H. H. Johnston, Liberia (1906), volume I; W. E. B. Du Bois, "The College-bred Negro," Atlanta University Pubs., no. 5 (1900).]

W E. B. D-B.


RUST, Richard Sutton (September 12, 1815- December 22, 1906), Methodist Episcopal clergyman, educator.  He entered Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, and was expelled with several students who refused to resign from an anti-slavery society. He then became a student at Canaan, New Hampshire, an academy which admitted negroes. When local opposition closed this, he went to Wilbraham Academy, Wilbraham, Massachusetts, and from there to Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn., from which he received the degree of A.B. in 1841. While a student he earned money by giving anti-slavery lectures.  In 1859, he was made president of Wilberforce University, a school for negroes, serving until it was sold to the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1863. During the Civil War he became early member of the Contraband Relief Association, later the Western Freedmen's Aid Commission.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 253-254:

RUST, RICHARD SUTTON (September 12, 1815- December 22, 1906), Methodist Episcopal clergyman, educator, was born in Ipswich, Massachusetts, the son of Nathaniel Rust, Jr., and his second wife, Mary (Sutton) Kimball. He was descended from Henry Rust who emigrated from England and settled in Hingham, Massachusetts, as early as 1635. Richard's father, a cordwainer and dealer in boots and shoes, died when the boy was but six years old; his mother, when he was nine. He tried working on an uncle's farm, then cabinetmaking, but, eager for an education, he bought back a part of his time of apprenticeship and entered Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts. Expelled with several students who refused to resign from an anti-slavery society, he became a student at Canaan, New Hampshire, in an academy which admitted negroes. When local opposition closed this, he went to Wilbraham Academy, Wilbraham, Massachusetts, and from there to Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn., from which he received the degree of A.B. in 1841. While a student he earned money by giving anti-slavery lectures. He was received into the New England Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church on trial in 1844, and ordained elder in 1846. During a pastorate in Worcester, Massachusetts, he founded and edited The American Pulpit (1845-48), a collection of sermons including a few of his own. Transferred to the New Hampshire Conference in 1846, he became principal of the New Hampshire Conference Seminary (now Tilton School) and state school commissioner. He made some improvements in the school system, but soon returned to preaching. In 1841 he married Sarah A. Hubbard; after her death he married, in 1875, Elizabeth A. Lownes.

Rust's early concern for the negro became his dominating interest. Transferred to the Cincinnati Conference in 1859, he was made president of Wilberforce University, a school for negroes, serving until it was sold to the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1863. For the next two years he was president of Wesleyan Female College, Cincinnati. He shared the intense local interest in the early Contraband Relief Association, later the Western Freedmen's Aid Commission, of which he became corresponding secretary in 1865. When, finally, the many relief societies were united into the American Freedman’s Union Commission, Rust became a member of the western branch of the executive committee. He soon grew dissatisfied with the work of this large, undenominational body, however, for he was sectarian in his interests, violently prejudiced against the "Romanists," and insisted that the mission of the teacher sent to the South was to evangelize as well as educate. He therefore helped to organize the Freedmen's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, at Cincinnati, in 1866, served as its general field agent for two years, and then as corresponding secretary for over twenty years. He vigorously directed and helped in the work of securing funds, overseeing schools in operation and suggesting improvements, selecting sites for new schools, planning buildings, and keeping the needs of the society constantly before the laity. One of these schools, Rust University at Holly Springs, Miss., was renamed for him. It was estimated in 1882 that the teachers sent out from these institutions had taught more than three-fourths of a million children. When, in 1892, he finally retired, he was still alert, impressive though grizzled in appearance, and forceful in address. He died in Cincinnati in his ninety-second year. His publications include: Freedom's Gifts: or Sentiments of the Free (1840), a compilation, including two contributions of his own; Met hod of Introducing Religion into Common Schools (n.d.); and The Freedmen's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal, Church (1880); he also edited and contributed to Isaac W. Wiley, Late Bishop of the M. E. Church, a Monograph (1885).

[J. M. Buckley, A History of Methodists in the U. S. (1896); A. D. Rust, Record of the Rust Family Embracing the Descendants of Henry Rust (privately printed, 1891); Matthew Simpson, ed., Cyclopedia of Methodism (5th ed., 1882); The Biog. Encyclopedia of Ohio of the Nineteenth Century (1876); Annual Catalog, Rust University, 1889- 90; Wiley College Announcements, I924-25; Alumni Record of Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn. (1921); American Freedman, April 1866.]

H. R. S.


RYLAND, Robert (March 14, 1805-April23, 1899), Baptist clergyman, educator.  In addition to his college work, he labored among the negroes of Richmond, serving as pastor of the First African Church from 1841 to 1865, during which time nearly four thousand members were added to the church roll. The catechism he wrote for his unlettered members required only two answers, "yes" or "no," with a passage of scripture to be memorized to support the answer. Many of the leaders of the negroes in Richmond in the early decades of their struggle up from slavery gratefully acknowledged their indebtedness to him.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 272-273:

RYLAND, ROBERT (March 14, 1805-April23, 1899), Baptist clergyman, educator, was the son of Josiah and Catharine (Peachey) Ryland of "Farmington,'' King and Queen County, Virginia. From 1820 to 1823 he was a student at Humanity Hall Academy, conducted by Peter Nelson in Hanover County, and in 1826 he was graduated from Columbian College, Washington, D. C. Entering the Baptist ministry, he accepted a call to the Second Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia. When, in 1832, the Baptists established at Richmond the Virginia Baptist Seminary to educate young men for the ministry, he was placed in charge. No detail of direction was too minute for his watchful care. He recruited likely students as he drove through the state, combining the mission of preacher and teacher. When the Seminary was chartered as Richmond College in 1840, he was made president and continued to direct its affairs with fidelity to two principles he had adopted-to keep the college out of debt and to make no educational claims that he was not able to substantiate. When the Civil War interrupted its logical development, the faculty, student body, buildings, and endowment attested his successful and constructive leadership.

In addition to his college work, he labored among the negroes of Richmond, serving as pastor of the First African Church from 1841 to 1865, during which time nearly four thousand members were added to the church roll. The catechism he wrote for his unlettered members required only two answers, "yes" or "no," with a passage of scripture to be memorized to support the answer. Many of the leaders of the negroes in Richmond in the early decades of their struggle up from slavery had been taught their standards in life by him and gratefully acknowledged their indebtedness. When the war was over, he resigned in the belief that the church would prefer a preacher of the negro race, an arrangement not hitherto permitted under Virginia law.

Before the war, in an address published under the title The American Union (1857), he had advised against the defense of slavery as right in the abstract, though he saw in the institution a means used by God to teach the negroes the Christian religion. He favored colonization in Africa, was opposed to disunion, counseled compromise on the part of the South, and recommended abstinence from all agitation on the subject of the "peculiar institution." He supported the Confederacy, however; devoted his time and resources to the care of wounded soldiers; invested his own savings in the Confederate cause, and advised the investment of the endowment funds of Richmond College in Confederate bonds. In 1866, feeling that younger minds should direct the affairs of a college to serve the new generation,  he resigned the presidency of Richmond College: Subsequently he accepted a position to teach in the National Theological School for negro preachers in Richmond, and  was connected, also, with the Richmond Female Institute, a Baptist school for girls. In 1868 he moved to Kentucky to become president of the Shelbyville Female College, served a similar institution at Lexington (1871-78), and another at New Castle (1878-81). He spent succeeding years with a daughter in Lexington, and in 1893, when nearly ninety years old, became chaplain of Southwest Virginia Institute, at Bristol, acting in that capacity for four years.

His published books and pamphlets include Baptism for the Remission of Sins (1836); A Scripture Catechism for the Instruction of Children and Servants (1848); Lect1tres on the Apocalypse (1857); The Virginia Baptist Educational Society: The Society-The Seminary-The College (1891); and "A Sketch of the Life of the Late Reverend Robert Baylor Semple," in the Virginia Baptist Preacher (Richmond), April 1852. His first wife, whom he married in 1830, was Josephine, daughter of Thomas Norvell of Richmond; she died in 1846, and he later married Betty Presley Thornton, daughter of Anthony and Ann Thornton of Caroline County. There were four children by the first marriage and three by the second.

[Papers and letters of Ryland are in the possession of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society, University of Richmond; his Virginia Baptist Etc. Society: the Society: the Sem.-the College, with intro. by C H. Ryland, gives an account of his services as president of Richmond College; see also, H. A. Tupper, The First Century of the First Baptist Church of Richmond, Virginia (1880); G. B. Taylor, Virginia Baptist Ministers (4 series, 1913); M. C. A. Cabell, Sketches and Recollections of Lynchburg (1858); Times (Richmond), April 25, 1899; G. B. Taylor, Life and Times of James B. Taylor (copyright 1872).]

M. H. W.



Source: Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes I-X, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.