August Ruihley Papers (Archbold, Ohio)

Little is known of August Ruihley's early life. His father, Clemens Ruihley, a farmer, came to the United States in 1854 from the Canton of Schaffhausen, Switzerland, at the age of twenty-four. Ruihley was born on a farm near Archbold, Ohio on August 3, 1869. The first stage of his formal education ended when he reached the age of thirteen in 1882, which made him too old for the local country school. No public high school existed in the area, but his connection to education did not end. He became a schoolmaster himself and taught for two years before attending Fayette Normal, Music, and Business College (Fayette, Ohio). He was enrolled at Fayette between 1885 and 1887 when he completed the course of studies called the English Normal curriculum which was designed to prepare teachers.

Ruihley began teaching in the Leninger (Ohio) School District, the autumn after ending his studies. During the following year he began reading law in the offices of John W. Rosenborough, a lawyer in Burlington, Ohio. On August 25, 1890 he married Anna Frey, the twenty-three year old daughter of Conrad Frey, an Archbold farmer.

This period was interrupted by a serious illness which would affect the rest of Ruihley's life. Sometime during the autumn of 1892 he contracted a case of either pneumonia or typhoid fever that brought him near death. His doctor decided he had to be moved to take advantage of the medical resources of the Indianapolis Clinic. Although Ruihley survived the disease, the muscles of his neck froze in the position in which he had been propped during the course of his illness. Over the next several years, rheumatoid arthritis set into the same area, resulting in a spine that curved forward, starting just above the waist. This affected his lungs, heart, intestines, and stomach and meant that, as his grandson Glenn Ruihley has written, "August spent the rest of his life in a struggle against progressive physical breakdown."

In spite of his ill health, Ruihley led an industrious life, supporting his family and assisting two sons and a daughter through college. Paula (Ruihley) Urrutia graduated from Western College at Oxford, Ohio, and went on to teach foreign languages in Chicago. She married in 1925 and moved to South America where, according to Glenn Ruihley, she "lived elegantly in distinguished social circles." Alonzo did undergraduate work at Miami University, attended law school at the University of Michigan, and received the doctor of jurisprudence degree with highest honors from that institution. He went on to become secretary and treasurer of the Trucson Steel Company in Youngstown, Ohio. Elliot, valedictorian of his high school class, also attended the University of Michigan where he studied architecture and engineering. He became president of a successful architectural firm in Toledo.

The work through which Ruihley supported his family was of necessity various, because of the limited range of opportunities for work other than manual labor offered by Archbold (which, even as late as 1922 had a population of only 1,100). Starting in 1892, he began working as a notary public in real estate, insurance, and legal work. He served as township, and then village clerk, and for thirty-two years, staring in 1894, he served as justice of the peace. Although ill-health had prevented him from taking the bar exam, he functioned as Archbold's only lawyer. His conscientious labor in all these fields earned him the respect of his fellow citizens, who referred to him as Squire Ruihley. They elected him to seven consecutive terms as mayor of Archbold. He served from January 1916 until his death on June 19, 1928.

During his years in office, Ruihley reviewed and reformulated all the village ordinances to ensure their internal consistency and compliance with the Ohio legal code, dealt with a severe financial crisis through sound knowledge of options available under the law and wise fiscal management, and, for the first time in the history of the village, made certain that all official acts of the council and mayor were recorded and published. The act for which he is best known, however, and the one which became, through the actions of the townspeople of Archbold, a living memorial to him, was the founding of a thirteen and one-half acre park within the town limits. An avid gardener, Ruihley lobbied for the park out of concern that young people have playing fields and a swimming pool available and that the community have a place for public celebrations and a picnicking ground. He was able to reduce its cost considerably by locating donors of plant material and motivating volunteer labor. During his final illness, the townspeople expressed their appreciation by naming the park for him.