JH Ingraham

Joseph Holt Ingraham, he also wrote under the pen name F. Clinton Barrington

Joseph Holt Ingraham (born January 26, 1809 in Portland , Massachusetts , † December 18, 1860 in Holly Springs , Mississippi ) was an American clergyman and author .

Life

Early life

Joseph Ingraham was born in Portland, what is now Maine, to James Milk Ingraham and Elizabeth Thurston. His grandfather, Joseph Holt, naval architect and trader by trade, often took his grandson with him on his trips to South America . Ingraham spent large parts of his childhood in Buenos Aires and, according to his own statements, was a member of a revolution among the Argentine population.

Career

Shortly after his return to the USA, he decided, like his brother, JPT Ingraham, who later also worked as a Reverend , to attend school. His biographical notes name Bowdoin College , which Ingraham is said to have attended. But there are uncertainties in this regard, as the archives of Bowdoin College Ingraham are said to have failed the entrance test. However, the New York Quarterley believes that Ingraham attended Yale University but did not graduate.

Ingraham moved to New Orleans and later to Natchez, Mississippi, around 1830 . Here he tried it briefly as a lawyer , but gave up his project quickly and became a teacher at Jefferson College in Washington (Mississippi). It was here that Ingraham began to publish for the first time and published his first novel, The Southwest, by a Yankee , in 1835 . Just one year later, his next adventure novel, Lafitte, the Pirate of the Gulf, followed in 1836 .

Burton; or The Sieges , published in 1838, tells of Aaron Burr and the War of Independence . Captain Kyd was published in 1839 and The Quadroone two years later ; or St. Michael's Day . Ingraham wrote a total of over 80 novels, which were first presented to the public in weekly newspapers. Although paper was a luxury item at the time, there were newspapers that offered a lot of money to have a work of Ingraham printed on their paper.

In Natchez, Ingraham met Mary Brooks, daughter of Phillips Brooks , a bishop of the Episcopal Church in Massachusetts, whom he married around 1847. Over time, the couple had four children, a son and three daughters. 1849 opened Ingraham with its financial resources a girls' school in Nashville ( Tennessee ). This, as well as the experiences within his family, must have been some of the reasons why he decided to study theology . He was also influenced by his brother, JPT Ingraham, who was a priest of Christ's Church in Nashville at the time.

Ingraham was ordained a deacon of Trinity Episcopal Church in 1851 and ordained a year later, on March 7, 1852, by Bishop Green at St. Andrews Church, Jackson . Stations of his spiritual work were Mobile ( Alabama ), Aberdeen (Mississippi), Riverside ( Tennessee ) and finally, in 1858, Holly Springs, Mississippi.

It was during this time that Ingraham began to specialize from adventure novels to Christian novels. In 1855, for example, he published The Prince of the House of David and in 1859 The Pillar of Fire , which almost 100 years later, in 1956, formed the basis for Cecil B. DeMille's film adaptation of the Bible, The Ten Commandments .

Death and aftermath

Ingrahams death in 1860 was believed to be a tragic accident. When he attempted to put a loaded pistol in a drawer in the sacristy of his church on December 8 , it fell to the ground and fired a shot. The bullet pierced his thigh, causing such severe internal injuries that he died ten days later, a few weeks before his 51st birthday. His son Prentiss, who published his father's unpublished novels posthumously, transferred the rights to Beadle's publishing house , which still owns the original manuscripts today.

Web links

• Literature by and about JH Ingraham in the catalog of the German National Library
• JH Ingraham in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Ingrahams works online