Wells Family - Person Sheet
Wells Family - Person Sheet
NameHenry Ruttan
Birth12 Jun 1792, Adolphustown, Lennox & Addington Co, Ontario, Canada
Death30 Jul 1871, Cobourg, Northumberland Co, Ontario, Canada
BurialSt Peter's Anglican Cem, Cobourg, Ontario, Canada
FatherLieut. William Ruttan (1759-1843)
MotherMargaret Steele (1764-1844)
Misc. Notes
Issue - David, Henry, William, Bensen, and Peter.
At the outbreak of the War of 1812 served as a Sergeant in Capt. John Spencer's Flank Company, 1st Regt. Northumberland Militia, and as Lieutenant, 2nd Batt. of Lieut.-Col. William Robinson's 8th Regt. of the Line in 1813. He received a serious wound at the Battle of Lundy's Lane, rejoining his regiment at York the following December. In 1816 he was made a Major of Militia, and a few years later, Colonel.
Member of Parliament for Northumberland 1820-1824, 1836-1840. Speaker of the House of Assembly between 28 Dec 1837 and 24 Jan 1838. Sheriff of the Newcastle District 1827-1857.
Buried at St. Peter's Anglican Church.
[Wikipedia]
Henry Ruttan (June 12, 1792 – July 31, 1871) was a businessman, inventor and politician figure in Upper Canada.
He was born in Adolphustown in 1792. At the age of 14, he left school to work in a store in Kingston. He served in the militia during the War of 1812. After the war, he remained in the militia and reached the rank of colonel. He left the militia in 1846 but was called back into service from 1860 to 1862. He set up a business in Cobourg in 1815. In 1820, he was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada for Northumberland; he served until 1824 and was reelected in 1836. He served as speaker of the house from December 1837 to January 1838. In 1827, he was named sheriff for the Newcastle District; he continued to serve after the district was replaced by the United Counties of Northumberland and Durham in 1849.
Ruttan designed more efficient heating and ventilation equipment for buildings and also invented a system for heating and cooling railway coaches that was put to use by several railway companies in North America.
He died in Cobourg in 1871.

HON. HENRY RUTTAN (The Cannadian Biographical Dictionary pg 729)
Coburg
THE late Henry Buttan was the son of a United Empire Loyalist, William Ruttan, who settled in Adolphustown, Upper Canada, about 1784, where Henry was born in 1792. He descended from a Huguenot family of Rochelle, France, the founder of the family being the Rev. Jean Baptiste Rotan, a prominent ecclesiastical writer and controversialist near the close of the sixteenth century.
His grandfather emigrated to America in 1734, and settled with other Huguenot families at New Rochelle, Manchester county, New York. His father and uncle Peter Ruttan, were in the 3rd Battalion Jersey Volunteers, on the Royalist side; each had a grant of twelve hundred acres of land in Adolphustown, Midland District, and there settled with other United Empire Loyalist families, and greatly suffered the first few years on account of the hardships and destitution attendant on frontier life, eighty-five and ninety years ago. During one or two of the severest winters starvation seemed at times to be staring them in the face.
At fourteen years of age (1806), our subject finished his education, and repairing to Kingston, became a clerk in a store. When war with the United States broke out in 1812, he joined the "Incorporated Militia," held a Lieutenant's commission, and received a serious wound at Lundy's Lane, which laid him up for several months. When the war closed he went into business at Haldimand, Northumberland county, and not long afterwards was promoted to the rank of Major. A few years later he became Colonel.
In 1820 Col. Ruttan was elected to the House of Assembly of Upper Canada, for Northumberland; in October, 1827, was appointed sheriff of the Newcastle District, embracing Northumberland, Durham, and one or two other counties; in 1836 he was again elected to the Assembly, and in 1838 was the Speaker. His term of legislative service expired in 1840, and the last vote he cast was for the Union of Upper and Lower Canada, which was consummated on the 10th of February, 1841, though the Act had received the assent of Her Majesty the July before, a suspending clause causing the delay.
In 1857, when Col. Ruttan resigned the office of sheriff, he was, with one exception, the senior Sheriff and Colonel of Militia in the Province. For some time he had command of the 9th Military District, into which Upper and Lower Canada were divided. At one time he was President of the Provincial Agricultural Association, and took great interest in such matters being a public-spirited, enterprising man.
In 1860 he was thrown by accident from his buggy, and was seriously injured, recovering slowly and only partially.
In a short time he resumed his experimentings and writings on the theory of ventilation, on which he had been engaged several years, and continued them until 1866, when he was seized with apoplexy, and continued to gradually decline, until he expired, July 31, 1871.
The Cobourg Star of the same week (August 2nd), from which we glean many of these facts, says that:
"Mr. Ruttan was a good man, an humble christian, and left a name of which his children and relatives may be justly proud. At the time of his death he was in his eightieth year."
His funeral was attended by a large body of Masons, he being a member of that Order. The wife of Col. Ruttan was Mary Jones, an estimable lady who died February 21, 1873. She was the mother of nine children, four of whom preceded her to the spirit world, and one son, Henry Jones, has since followed her (February 4, 1879). He was editor and proprietor of the Cobourg Star from 1846 to 1855, and was interested for years with his father in what is now widely known as Ruttan's system of ventilation, which is largely in use and growing in popularity, as will be seen by Appleton's New Cyclopadia.
Mary, the only daughter living, is the widow of Judge Robert M. Boucher, of Peterborough. Charles is rector of a church near Toronto; Richard is a barrister and attorney-at-law, residing in Cobourg, and William E. is a shorthand writer and reporter in New York city.
Spouses
Birth1799, Hamilton, Wentworth Co, Ontario, Canada
Death21 Feb 1873, Cobourg, Northumberland Co, Ontario, Canada
Marriage26 May 1816, Cobourg, Ontario, Canada
ChildrenHenry Jones (1819-1879)
Last Modified 24 Apr 2023Created 1 Jun 2023 using Reunion on a Mac