Ruggles Township, Ashland County

How Ruggles Township, Ashland County began

Ruggles Township sits in the northwest corner of Ashland County and takes its name from Almon Ruggles, an early landowner and surveyor. A post office opened at Ruggles in 1828 and ran until 1904. The township drew a notably international mix of settlers for rural Ohio: the 1850 census records a cluster of Scottish immigrant families working as stonemasons, blacksmiths, farmers, and joiners, and the township's several small church congregations -- Congregational, Lutheran, Methodist Episcopal, a short-lived Baptist body, and even a Mormon following drawn by a traveling preacher -- reflect that mixed settlement. Its best-documented historic property, the Crittenden farm, was built up by a family that had been among the township's earliest and most prominent settlers. Today Ruggles remains a lightly populated farming township of under a thousand people.

Where the name comes from

The township's name most likely derives from Almon Ruggles, an early pioneer landowner in the area. A post office named Ruggles operated in the township from 1828 until 1904.

Before the town

No source found records a named Native village, mound, trail, or treaty line specifically inside Ruggles Township. The county's best-known Native history -- the Delaware (Lenape) village of Greentown, burned in September 1812 -- stood in Green Township near Perrysville, well to the southeast of Ruggles Township. Nothing township-specific about Native presence, trails, or land cession turned up in the sources consulted.

Timeline

1. 1827 — The First Congregational Church at Ruggles Centre organizes with eleven members, on January 11.
2. 1828 — A post office named Ruggles opens in the township; it would operate until 1904.
3. 1837 — Methodist Episcopal services begin, with a visiting minister from Mount Vernon holding monthly meetings in private homes and a log schoolhouse.
4. 1850 — The federal census records a significant cluster of Scottish immigrant families in the township, including stonemasons, blacksmiths, farmers, and joiners.
5. 1852 — A Lutheran congregation organizes under Rev. John Pope.
6. 1878 — The Crittenden family farmhouse is built in the Second Empire and Italianate styles.
7. 1882 — Alvin Crittenden, son of one of Ruggles Township's earliest and most prominent settler families, establishes the present Crittenden Farm near the Troy Township line after succeeding his father in the stock-raising business.
8. 1982 — The Crittenden Farm, a 665-acre sheep-farming complex northwest of Savannah, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (April 22, reference 82003540).

Stories

Scots on the Ohio frontier

The 1850 census of Ruggles Township turns up a cluster of family names not common elsewhere in Ashland County at the time: Walker, Innes, Gibb, Beatie, Thompson, Lindsay, Bowman, Malcolm, Buchan, Jeffrey, Anderson, Lang, and Thom. These were Scottish immigrant households, and the census lists their trades alongside the more usual Ohio farmer: stonemasons, blacksmiths, and joiners among them. Their presence helps explain the unusual variety of small church congregations that took root in the township in the same years -- Congregational, Lutheran, Methodist, even a short-lived Mormon following drawn by a preacher named Solomon Hancock -- in a rural township too small to easily support so many.

From stock farm to the National Register

The Crittenden family were among the earliest and most prominent settlers of Ruggles Township, and their name is attached to one of the township's four historic cemeteries as well as to its one National Register property. Alvin Crittenden, one of ten children, took over his father's stock-raising business and in 1882 moved the operation eastward, near the Troy Township line, to establish what is now called the Crittenden Farm. The 1878 farmhouse, built in the Second Empire and Italianate styles, still stands at the center of a 665-acre complex that the National Register recognized in 1982 as one of the region's most intact examples of 19th-century Ohio stock-farm architecture and land use.

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · ashland.ohgenweb.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org

Wells (14 listed as active in EPA SDWIS: Wells 1-7 and 10-15; Well 9 was deactivated 2025-11-17) in the Jerome Fork Basin sand-and-gravel aquifer, sited generally north of the treatment plant on Cleveland Road The water here

• Rural Lorain Co. Water A64% of residentsMostly Lake Erie (bought from Avon Lake); some New London Reservoir and Ashland wells
• New London Village19% of residentsBuck Creek, impounded in New London's upground reservoir
• Greenwich Village16% of residentsGroundwater wells (6 wells)
• Northern Ohio Rural Water - SE District1% of residentsLake Erie

Bridges rated poor (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (2)

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