Philo Taylor Ruggles (1803–1894) was an American lawyer and jurist active in New York City through much of the nineteenth century. Born on 15 March 1803 in New Milford, Litchfield County, Connecticut, he built a legal career in New York and served as a judge of the New York Surrogate's Court. In that capacity he presided over one of the era's more sensational cases: on 14 September 1836 he granted the divorce of Eliza Jumel from her husband, Aaron Burr, a ruling finalized — by historical coincidence — on the very day Burr died. Late in life, in 1882, Ruggles turned to writing local history, publishing A House With a History (Charles Hamilton & Co., New York), a chronicle of the Morris-Jumel Mansion in Manhattan. The book traces the estate's line of owners and occupants, from its origins as Colonel Roger Morris's colonial residence, through its service as George Washington's Revolutionary War headquarters, to its later ownership by Stephen and Eliza Jumel and the legal disputes that followed Eliza Jumel's death, all set against a portrait of the surrounding city's transformation. The work remains a primary nineteenth-century source on the mansion's history and is now in the public domain. Ruggles died on 17 January 1894, at the age of ninety.
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