Joseph Holt Ingraham

Biography
        Joseph Holt Ingraham (January 26, 1809–December 18, 1860) was born in Portland, Maine.  He spent several years at sea, then worked as a teacher of languages in Mississippi.  In Natchez, Ingraham married Mary Brooks, a cousin of Phillips Brooks, an Episcopal clergyman and author best known for writing the lyrics of the Christmas hymn, “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”  Ingraham himself became an Episcopal clergyman on March 7, 1852.
        In the 1840s Ingraham published stories in Arthur’s Magazine and became a prolific fiction writer under the pen names “F. Clinton Barrington,” “Adina,” “Kate Conyngham,” “Greenliffe Warren,” “A Yankee,” “A. G. Piper,” and possibly “H. L. Williams.”  Upon meeting Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1846, Ingraham told him he had “written eighty novels, and of these twenty during the last year.”  Whether this was a playful exaggeration or not is hard to say.  He is best known today for a series of three epistolary novels on biblical themes: The Pillar of Fire, The Throne of David, and The Prince of the House of David.  The first of these was supposed to illustrate the beginning of Hebraic power, the second its culmination, and the last its decadence.
        Tragically, Ingraham died at the age of 51 in Holly Springs, Mississippi, from an accidental self-inflicted gunshot wound in the vestibule of his church.  Taking a loaded pistol from a drawer, it slipped from his hand and, upon hitting the floor, discharged.  The bullet entered his thigh, passed up his side, and caused intense suffering for some ten days before he finally succumbed.  He was survived by his wife and son, Prentiss Ingraham, who became an even more prolific author than his father, and later revised and republished some of his father’s fiction.

Bibliography (wildly incomplete)
      The Southwest, by A Yankee (1835)
      Lafitte, the Pirate of the Gulf (1836)
      Burton; or, The Sieges (1838)
      Captain Kyd; or, The Wizard of the Sea (1839)
      The Burglar Captain; or, The Fallen Star (??)
      The Quadroone; or, St. Michael’s Day (1841)
      The Dancing Feather; or The Amateur Freebooters (1843)
      Morris Græme; or, The Cruise of the Sea-Slipper (1843, sequel to The Dancing Feather)
      The Corsair of Casco Bay; or, The Pilot’s Daughter (1844)
      Eleanor Sherwood (1844)
      Scarlet Feather; or, The Young Chief of the Albanaquies (1845)
      Grace Weldon; or, Frederica, the Bonnet-girl: A Tale of Boston and Its Bay (1845)
      Montezuma the Serf; or, the Revolt of the Mexitili (1845)
      The Silver Ship of Mexico: A Tale of the Spanish Main (1846)
      Paul Perril, the Merchant's Son; or, The Adventures of a New-England Boy Launched Upon Life (1847)
      Mark Manly; or, The Skipper’s Lad (1848)
      The Sunny South (1850, as “Kate Conyngham”)
      The Prince of the House of David (1855)
      The Dancing Star; or, The Smuggler of the Chesapeake (1857)
      The Pillar of Fire (1859)
      The Throne of David (1860)

Other links
      University of Mississippi (bios of both J. H. and Prentiss Ingraham, his son)
      Wikipedia
      Wikipedia - Joseph Holt Ingraham House (built by his father)

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