Wife of Col Joseph Chapline, founder of Sharpsburg, Maryland.

Ruhama Williams Chapline was born in Carmarthenshire, Wales in 1717 to Rev. William Williams, a Presbyterian minister, and his wife Sarah James. After the death of her mother and several siblings, Ruhama and her sisters Sarah and Jane accompanied their father to the Virginia Colony where he was a missionary. By 1739 Rev. Williams owned land in Price George's County, Maryland and the Monocacy Valley. 

Ruhama Williams eloped with Joseph Chapline. Their marriage date of October 22, 1741was recorded at All Saints Parish (Frederick County, Maryland). Her two sisters also eloped. Jane married Col. Benjamin Chambers, founder of Chambersburg, PA, in 1748, and Sarah married William Price, an attorney in Hagerstown, MD.

Ruhama and Joseph Chapline had eleven children.

In 1893 Joseph Chapline's great-great niece had the remains of Chapline family members moved to Mountain View Cemetery from a family burial ground on the old Chapline farm overlooking the Potomac River west of Sharpsburg. The monument erected at Mountain View Cemetery in 1893 lists Joseph and Ruhama on the front and the names of five of their children on the sides. It was probably believed at the time that these five were buried with their parents. Four of the five probably are buried here but daughter Ruhamah Chapline Thompson is buried in Columbus, Ohio. Four other children are buried at Mount Calvary Lutheran Cemetery in Sharpsburg, MD. Two daughters died by the age of six and were interred at the old Episcopal graveyard in Frederick, Maryland in 1748 and 1754.

When Joseph Chapline died in 1769 his widow Ruhama was about 52 years old and five of her nine living children were between the ages of 9 and 17. Joseph's land holdings, including the town of Sharpsburg, were left to his four sons. He willed his home farm to his youngest son Jeremiah, age 13. Presumably Ruhama continued living in the two story weather boarded log house at their farm until her death at age 79.