Benjamin Ruggles (1783–1857), attorney and public official, was born in Windham County, Connecticut. Having been admitted to the bar, he relocated in 1807 to Marietta, Ohio, and established a legal practice. Ruggles moved to Saint Clairsville a few years later, served as the presiding judge of a court of common pleas, 1810–15, and sat in the United States Senate, 1815–33. During his political career he supported the presidential aspirations of William H. Crawford, John Quincy Adams, and William Henry Harrison, and opposed those of Andrew Jackson. A Freemason and sometime bank director, Ruggles retired from public office in 1833, resumed his legal practice, and took up farming. The owner of real estate worth $1,200 in 1850, he died at his home in Saint Clairsville after a brief illness (Biog. Dir. Cong. description begins Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774–Present, online resource, Office of the Clerk, United States House of Representatives description ends ; John A. Caldwell, History of Belmont and Jefferson Counties, Ohio [1880], 239; William A. Taylor, Ohio in Congress from 1803 to 1901 [1900], 48; Journal of the Senate of the State of Ohio, being the first session of the Eighth General Assembly [Chillicothe, 1809], 269–70; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Ohio, being the fourteenth General Assembly [Zanesville, 1815], 169; Proceedings of the Grand Lodge of Ohio, at a Grand Communication, in January, A. L. 5813—A. D. 1813 [Chillicothe, 1813], 33; Steubenville Western Herald, 19 July 1816; Middletown, Conn., American Sentinel, 11 Aug. 1824; DNA: RG 29, CS, Ohio, Belmont Co., Richland Township, 1820–50; Saint Clairsville Belmont Chronicle, 10 Sept. 1857; gravestone inscription in Saint Clairsville Union Cemetery).