Charles A. Ruggles

DR. CHARLES A. RUGGLES is a man of interesting experience, has lived at Stafford many years, and is proprietor of the Ruggles Sanitarium there. The interest and charm of the wild led him to travel in many states and in distant countries, and he knows intimately the frontier life of former times.

He is of an old English family that came to America in colonial times and was born in Jefferson County, Iowa, May 25, 1854. His father was Thomas W. Ruggles, born in Kentucky in 1825, whose brother, Gen. George B. Ruggles, served forty-seven years in the United States army. In 1839 the parents of Thomas W. Ruggles moved to Iowa, which was then a territory, and Thomas W. grew up and married in Jefferson County. He spent all his life as a farmer, and after 1900, at the request of his professional son, moved to Stafford, Kansas, but he died while visiting at Warrensburg, Missouri, in 1913. He was a democrat, a thirty-second degree Mason and a member of the Missionary Baptist Church. Thomas W. Ruggles married Elizabeth Jane Mitchell, who died at Warrensburg, Missouri, in 1916. Charles A. Ruggles was the oldest of their children; J. H. moved to Dakota; Belle married Marion Packwood, a retired farmer at Lincoln, Nebraska; Mildred Christina and Louisa are both deceased; Annie is the wife of Harry Brainard, a real estate man at Los Angeles, California; Maud L. is the wife of John Carter, owner of mining interests at Gooding, California; George lives near Lamar, Kansas, on a farm; Thomas W. is also a farmer near Lamar, and four other children died in infancy.

Charles A. Ruggles attended the public schools in Fairfield, Iowa, graduating from high school. In 1870, at the age of sixteen, he started for California with a drove of cattle from Omaha, Nebraska, went over the plains, and became acquainted enroute with William Cody, everywhere known as "Buffalo Bill." He has himself long borne the sobriquet of "Modoc Charlie," a title given him by Californians for his part in suppressing an uprising of Modoc Indians in that state. He carries two scars from bullet wounds received in early days, one on a finger and the other on his left cheek. In 1874 he returned to Jefferson County. Iowa, and in 1875 married. He had in the meantime taken up the study of medicine, and when he married began its practice in Jefferson County. In 1878 he went to Comanche Pool, Comanche County, Kansas, and helped organize that county. During 1881 he spent three months at Phoenix, Arizona, and then had three years of varied experience in Old Mexico. For five years he practiced medicine at San Francisco and then followed a leisurely tour and sojourn in Washington, Oregon, Utah and Idaho, and in 1896 he settled permanently at Stafford, Kansas. In 1897 he built a modern hospital or sanitarium, the largest in Western Kansas, with a capacity for fifty beds. Patients to this institution have come from Kansas, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and many other states. He specializes in chronic diseases and has perfected some remedies which are sold all over the world, even in South Africa.

Doctor Ruggles has served as coroner of Stafford County. He is a member of the State and American Medical associations, is a former member of the Modern Woodmen of America, and in politics is a republican. He is also a modest farmer.

By his first wife Doctor Ruggles has three children: Carrie, living at Stafford, widow of Joseph Wilson, a grain dealer there; Charles B., a ranchman at Santa Fe, New Mexico; and May, wife of Joseph Thompson, a farmer in Reno County, Kansas. Doctor Ruggles married in May, 1907, his present wife, Miss Lizzie M. Eggvrecht, a native of Kansas.

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