David Colden Ruggles

Major, Paymaster

United States Army

David Colden Ruggles, the son of David and Sarah Colden Ruggles, was born circa 1819.  He is the brother of Brigadier General George David Ruggles.  He married the former Julia Elvira Canfield on 17 January 1856 in Mahoning County, Ohio.

At 2:30 a.m. on 14 October 1864, Mosby’s Guerillas attacked at military train two miles east of Kearneysville, West Virginia.  Aboard that train was David and fellow Paymaster Major Moore, with a payroll of $173,000 to pay General Sheridan’s soldiers. Both Paymasters and 18 other soldiers were taken prisoner and sent to the Confederate Military Prison at Danville, Virginia.  David died at the military prison on 10 February 1865.

Major David Colden Ruggles, Paymaster United States Army, is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery in Clarkstown, New York.

Source of information:

1.  Ancestry.com. Biographies of Notable Americans, 1904 [database online]. Orem, UT: MyFamily.com, Inc., 1997. Original data: Johnson, Rossiter, ed. Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans. Volumes I-X. Boston, MA: The Biographical Society, 1904.

2.  Dodd, Jordan, Liahona Research, comp. Ohio Marriages, 1803-1900 [database online]. Provo, UT: MyFamily.com, Inc., 2001. Original data: See extended description for original data sources listed by county.

3.  United States Army Finance Corps Museum, Fort Jackson, South Carolina.

4.  The Memoirs of Colonel John S. Mosby, by John Singleton Mosby; Boston; Little, Brown, and Company, 1917 (http://www.webroots.org/library/usamilit/mocjsm00.html).