Hulda Augusta Ruggles^[1]

1822 - 1871  (49 years)

• Name	Hulda Augusta Ruggles
  Birth	12 Apr 1822	Waimea, Kauai, Hawaii, United States   [2, 3]
  Gender	Female
  Alt. Birth	Connecticut, , , United States
  Augusta and the Mission Quilt	Sandwich Islands, , ,
  	Augusta and the Mission Quilt
  	From the Curator's Deskby Katie Gardner Eight year old Augusta Ruggles sewed the final stitches in her silk pieced quilt. Her older sister Sarah, her mother, and a number of her mother's friends from their regular sewing circle helped. This communal and social practice was and still is common in quilting. The year was 1830 and this New England ladies' group was working on a typical New England-style quilt-except they were sewing it in the Sandwich Islands.In October 1819 seven families sailed from Boston on the haddeus, arriving on April 4, 1820 in Kailua, Oahu in what is now known as Hawai'i. These families, mostly young married couples, were the first company of Christian missionaries sent to the islands by the American Board of Commissioners or Foreign Missions. Among the group were Connecticut newlyweds Samuel Ruggles, a teacher, and his wife, Nancy Wells Ruggles.The Ruggles and other New England missionaries brought their faith, their customs, their skills, and their aterial culture with them; all of which was shared and some of which Augusta and her sister returned to the United States after 1830 to attend school. The rest of their family followed in 1834. Augusta's treasured island quilt traveled with her and was eventually passed along to her son, Samuel Ruggles Stevens. Stevens, [born in 1852] moved to Colorado City near Colorado Springs in 1895 where he operated a shoe shop. In 1967 five of his children donated the fragile but lovely silk quilt to the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum in his memory. At this time his daughters Hulda Garnhart, Katherine Pearl Rogula, Hazel Madonna, Myrtle Cave and Clara Jones, also provided the long-held family tradition that Augusta's quilt was "made of cast-off robes of kings and queens" of the Sandwich Islands. There is a companion Ruggles quilt residing in the Mission Houses Museum in Honolulu, Hawai'i where museum volunteer, Diana Francese, saw it on display. This experience, she says, reinforced her love for historic artifacts and opened her heart to a new understanding of Hawaii's culture. She introduced the Mission Houses Museum's astonished staff to Augusta's quilt by providing them with photos and documentation from the CSPM. The "sister" quilts were reunited at last by research! A compa r i son of the two quilts reveals that the type of silk fabrics and the "Four Patch" pat tern used are the same. The color schemes are nearly mirror images: Augusta's quilt is primarily gold with blue h i g h l i g h t s , whi le the one in Honolulu is primari ly blue with gold accents. There are several identical fabrics in both quilts. The quilts were both made in 1830, and the Mission Houses Museum records indicate that the blue quilt was made by either Augusta's sister Sarah or their mother, Nancy Ruggles. It seems plausible that the two girls were making their quilts together under the instruction of their mother and her circle of sewing friends.The Hawaiians imported expensive Chinese silk fabric so that the missionaries could sew Western-style clothing for the Hawaiian royalty. The unused scraps were then used to make quilts including the two Ruggles quilts. In addition to the scraps, Augusta's quilt incorporates a piece of white floral fabric, with a visible curved seam that appears to be a scrap of a used woman's dress bodice. Could it have belonged to Nancy Ruggles? Augusta's quilt and the story of early nineteenth-century missionary life it represents are among an infinite number of history lessons embedded in the CSPM's collections. By preserving and studying them, we can bring the stories from the past alive once again.
  Federal	Neosho Falls Township, Woodson, Kansas Territory, United States   [2]
  	Federal
  	Role: Household Member
  Hawaiin Quilt	Sandwich Islands, , ,   [4, 5]
  	Hawaiin Quilt
  	Hulda was the first white child born in the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii). and made a silk quilt from the cast off clothing of the kings and queens. The edging is made of the kings trousers.
  		Quilt Doccumentation _TYPE: DOC
  		Museum Newsletter _TYPE: DOC
  Residence-Occupant	Neosho Falls Township, Woodson, Kansas Territory, United States   [6]
  	Role: Occupant
  Residence	1850	Brookfield, Fairfield, Connecticut, United States   [7]
  Residence	1860	Neosho Falls Township, Woodson, Kansas Territory, United States   [7]
  Death	26 May 1871	Stevensville, Bradford, Pennsylvania, United States   [3, 8]
  Burial	Stevensville, Bradford, Pennsylvania, United States   [8]
  		81106266.jpg _TYPE: PHOTO
  Person ID	I348	Emmert-Tipton
  Last Modified	18 Jul 2023

  
  

  Father	Samuel Ruggles,   b. 9 Mar 1795, Brookfield, Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States d. 6 Sep 1871, Fort Atkinson, Jefferson, Wisconsin, United States (Age 76 years)
  Mother	Nancy Wells,   b. 18 Apr 1791, East Windsor, , Connecticuit, United States d. 26 Feb 1872, Fort Atkinson, Jefferson, Wisconsin, United States (Age 80 years)
  Marriage	22 Sep 1819	Connecticut, , , United States   [9]
  	_HTITL: Husband _WTITL: Wife
  Family ID	F1620	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	Peter Stevens,   b. 10 Nov 1821, Stevensville, Bradford, Pennsylvania, United States d. 12 Apr 1861, Neosho Falls Township, Woodson, Kansas Territory, United States (Age 39 years)
  Marriage	31 Dec 1851	Brookfield, Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States   [3, 6, 10, 11]
  	_HTITL: Husband _WTITL: Wife
  Children	+ 1. Samuel Ruggles Stevens,   b. 23 Oct 1852, Hartford, Hartford, Connecticut, United States d. 1928, Colorado Springs, El Paso County, Colorado, United States (Age 75 years)   2. Charles A. Stevens,   b. 1854, Pennsylvania, , , United States
  Family ID	F1233	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	31 Dec 2022

  
  

• Event Map

  Alt. Birth - - Connecticut, , , United States  = Link to Google Earth

  
  

• Sources

  [S46] Ancestry Family Trees, (Online publication - Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com. Original data: Family Tree files submitted by Ancestry members.), Ancestry Family Trees (Reliability: 3). http://trees.ancestry.com/pt/AMTCitationRedir.aspx?tid=13823707&pid=71550674 [S339] 1860 Census (Family Search), (www.familysearch.org: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.), M653, Neosho Falls Township, p. 1, dwelling 3, Peter Stevens, accessed 19 Jan 2022 (Reliability: 3). [S301] Cyd, Rawls, Rawls Family Genealogy, (http://www.cydrawls.com/index.html : 2008), accessed 1 Nov 2010), http://www.cydrawls.com/ruggles.html (Reliability: 2). [S321] Colorado Springs Pioneer Museum, ((http://www.springsgov.com)), accessed 1 Jan 2011), http://www.springsgov.com/units/communications/Dec07Museletter.pdf. (Reliability: 3). [S301] Cyd, Rawls, Rawls Family Genealogy, (http://www.cydrawls.com/index.html : 2008), accessed 1 Jan 2011), http://www.cydrawls.com/ruggles.html (Reliability: 2). [S393] Ancestry.com, (www.ancestry.com), accessed 31 Dec 2022) (Reliability: 3). [S406] The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, FamilySearch Family Tree (http://www.familysearch.org), ((http://www.familysearch.org)), accessed 16 Dec 2021), entry for Hulda Augusta Ruggles, person ID KDBS-KXC. (Reliability: 3). [S300] Find a Grave, Find a Grave, ((http://www.findagrave.com/ : 2010)), accessed 19 Jan 2022), Hulda Wakelee Ruggles Stevens; https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/80153377/huldah-wakelee-stevens. (Reliability: 3). [S327] Family Search, Family Search, (Family Search . Familysearch.org.), (Familysearch.org : accessed 27 Jan 2022). (Reliability: 3). [S459] Emily C Hawley, editor, The Introduction of Christianity into the Hawaiian Islands, (Brattleboro, Vermont: Press of E.L. Hildreth, 1922.), 56. (Reliability: 3). [S254] The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, International Genealogical Index(R), (Copyright (c) 1980, 2002), downloaded 1 Nov 2010 (Reliability: 3).