In the last edition of Tidings I remarked upon the fun that can be had in researching the more obscure items acquired by an Historical Society in the course of 120 years. There is much that can be learned from our more significant items as well.

The portrait shown above is that of an early Dover resident, Ruggles Whiting. It was donated to the Society by a Mrs. Frank Willey in 1961. While unsigned, the portrait was attributed to the celebrated American portrait artist, Gilbert Stuart (1755-1827).

Ruggles Whiting was born in Dover on December 29, 1779 to Aaron Whiting and Mehitable Smith. Aaron Whiting was the younger brother of Captain Daniel Whiting, the town’s first tavern keeper and Revolutionary War hero. A prosperous farmer and businessman in his own right, Aaron Whiting was one of the partners who, in 1789, acquired the fourth mill privilege on Mother Brook in Dedham and established a mill for the blocking of copper coinage.

The Boston Taking List for 1800 lists Ruggles Whiting, then 21 years old, as living in Boston and employed as a clerk in the office of Jonathan Ellis, a manufacturer of paper and iron nail rods, at 41 State Street. Five years earlier, Jonathan Ellis and partners Josiah Newell, Jr., George Fisher, and George Bird, had purchased a site on the Charles River at what is known today as Charles River Village and erected a dam that would power an iron mill on the Dover side of the river and a paper mill on the Needham side. The partners were closely tied by blood, marriage, and other business ventures. Josiah Newell’s sister was Jonathan Ellis’ mother, and his wife was a sister of Aaron Whiting.

On July 2, 1806 Jonathan Ellis sold Ruggles an undivided one third interest in the Boston Iron & Nail Factory at Charles River Village, for which he would function as Agent from 1811 to 1816.

Jonathan Ellis was also closely tied to Jacob Perkins of Newburyport who, in 1790, had invented a machine reportedly capable of cutting and heading 500 nails per minute.

On August 4, 1805 Ruggles married Sarah Bullen, daughter of Bela Bullen of Dover, a livestock trader and one-time owner of the Whiting-Williams Tavern. The couple took up residence at 4 Pinkney Street in Boston and had three children before Sarah’s death from consumption on February 12, 1812 at 26 years of age.

In 1807 Ruggles and partners John Welles and Ralph Inman Reed purchased Bird’s Wire Mill on Mother Brook in Dedham. The seller, George Bird, also a partner in the Boston Iron & Nail Factory at Charles River Village, had acquired the wire mill from a partnership which included Ruggles’ father Aaron.

In 1811 Ruggles and a partner, William Stackpole, established a nail mill in Pittsburgh utilizing Jacob Perkins’ machine. It was said to be the most modern nail mill in the world.

David Thomas, who visited the city in 1816, wrote “the slitting and rolling mill, together with the nail factory of Stackpole & Whiting, is moved by a steam engine of seventy-horse power. These we visited with much satisfaction. On entering the south-west door, the eye catches the majestic swing of the beam; and at the same instant, nine nailing machines, all in rapid motion, burst into view. Bewildered by the varying velocity of so many new objects, we stand astonished at this sublime effort of human ingenuity.”

While in Pittsburgh the two entrepreneurs acquired several steamboats at foreclosure and ultimately began building them on their own, with the General Jackson and the James Ross completed in 1818.

The nail factory failed in 1819, ostensibly due to the British government dumping excess iron on the international market in the aftermath of the War of 1812.

At about this time Stackpole and Whiting removed to Louisville, Kentucky where they continued to operate their steamboats in the burgeoning Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio River trade.

Ruggles also joined a group of New England investors in the ill-fated Hope Distillery, essentially the first attempt to mass produce whiskey for commercial distribution.

Ruggles’ last years in Louisville appear to have been marked by a series of personal and financial losses. The Hope Distillery had failed by 1820. Both William Stackpole and his wife died of fever in 1822 and the steamboat General Jackson was lost on the Cumberland River that same year. The James Ross was holed by ice at St. Louis a year later.

At some point after 1823 Ruggles returned to Dover, where he died on February 28, 1827 at age 47. He was buried with his wife in the Reed Tomb at Trinity Church on Summer Street in Boston.

Trinity Church was destroyed in the Great Boston Fire of November 9, 1872 and in December of that year their remains were re-interred in a common lot with other Trinity Church members at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge.

His will, written at the peak of his prosperity in 1816, states “…I give and bequeath to my beloved son Lucius R. Whiting my library, charts, globes, my wardrobe including my watch and all wearing apparel, my chess board and best set of chess men, my portrait of myself taken by Gilbert Stuart, Esq., my portrait of Ralph I. Reed taken by the same artist before his death, and all my sporting apparatus of every kind.”

The will further states “…I give and bequeath to the government of the United States, my original portrait of Jacob Perkins Esquire of Newburyport, the great mechanical inventor, taken by Gilbert Stuart, Esq. the celebrated American artist, to be placed in such part of the national buildings, in the City of Washington, as the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States for the time being shall order and direct.”

The portrait appears to have passed from Ruggles by bequest to his only son, Lucius R. Whiting, who died without issue prior to 1839 and from Lucius to his sister Paulina Whiting Allen (1806-1895) of Medfield, grandmother of the donor, Helen Zenobia (Daniels) Willey.

It is difficult to precisely date the portrait however we note that Ruggles’ partner Ralph I. Reed died in 1812. While in no way definitive, we may speculate that the two good friends had their portraits “taken” at approximately the same time, likely around 1810 when Ruggles was 31 years old.

We have been unable as yet to determine the whereabouts of the Gilbert Stuart portraits of Ralph Reed and Jacob Perkins.

By Elisha Lee