| James Ingraham |
| James Edmunson Ingraham (1850 – 1924)
Mr. Ingraham became the vice president of the Florida East Coast Railway. He was born November 18, 1850, at Dartford, Green Lake County, Wisconsin as the oldest son of Rev. John Phillips Thurston Ingraham and Cornelia Fanning Root Ingraham. . He graduated from Racine College and moved to St. Louis, Missouri where he married and worked as a clerk. On June 19, 1872 he married Maria Elizabeth Baker in St. Louis, Missouri. Jame's grandfather in the 1870s was the rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in St. Augustine. In 1874 Ingraham came to Florida and for several years worked with General Henry S. Sanford as a clerk and general manager. Ingraham was the secretary and treasurer of the Sanford Telegraph Company. He lay out and developed the Town of Sanford for eight or nine years. He also built the South Florida railroad from a point near Sanford to Kissimmee for the R. M. Pulsifer Company, owners of The Boston Herald. He was President and manager of this railway in 1879 and was president until 1892. Henry Plant bought a three-fifths interest in the railway and extended it to Tampa, Gainesville, and High Springs. Connections were made to a line of steamers that traveled between Port Tampa, Key West, and Havana. On March 16, 1892 Ingraham and Captain J. W. Newman led an expedition from Fort Myers across the Everglades to Miami. From 1897-99 he was the land commissioner for the Florida East Coast Railway Company and from 1897 to 1903 was third vice president of the railway company. By 1903 he was in charge of industrial development along the railroad. In 1909 he became the senior vice president. He was the president of the Model Land Company, The Perrine Grand Land Company, the Chuluota Company, the Okeechobee Company, all auxiliary organizations of the Flagler system. Mr. Ingraham was also listed as general agent for Mr. Flagler and was in charge of renting the stores and cottages owned by Mr. Flagler in St. Augustine and elsewhere. He also laid out Miami. There were agencies in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Bowling Green, Ohio; Saginaw, Michigan, Chicago, Washington D. C., and Toronto, Canada. The Dallas Land Company owned lots in Miami and Fort Lauderdale. The Model Land Company owned land in Dade County Ingraham moved to St. Augustine in 1892 and from that year to 1897 he was the general agent for Henry Flagler. (He knew Flagler from 1885.) Ingraham did the work for the establishment of the West Palm Beach and Miami community. He was also a director of the First National Bank of St. Augustine from 1893. He was chairman of St. Johns County Bond Trustees and on July 7, 1915 was elected a member of the first City Commission of St. Augustine and was chosen chairman and mayor on the same date and by reelection continued as mayor until January 21, 1920. He was a member (and President) of the St. Augustine Country Club, St. Augustine Yacht Club, the Biscayne Bay Yacht Club, the Seminole Club of Jacksonville, the Gilbert Bar Yacht Club, the Osceola Club of St. Augustine, and the Loyal Order of Moose. He was a member of Trinity Episcopal Church. The Ingrahams had three children, one of whom died in infancy. Their son, James Draper Ingram, became sales agent of the Florida East Coast Railway. Daughter Kathleen Maria married George W. Gibbs, Jr. The Land Department was a part of the Florida East Coast Railway with headquarters in St. Augustine. The purpose of the department was to bring settlers to Florida. In 1897, the company had four hundred thousand acres of land to develop in the counties the railway went through. Ingraham was an active pallbearer at Henry Flagler’s funeral and received $20,000 in the will. James Ingraham died on October 25, 1924 in Georgia. His body was returned to St. Augustine on October 24, 1924. His funeral service was held at Trinity Episcopal Church. The pallbearers were F. E. Davies, S. C. McDaniel, Lloyd Clark, H. S. McLendon, T. B. Bennett, Merrill Wolfe, Charles, Brumley and Frank Pepper. Included in the honorary pallbearers were W. R. Kenan, Wh. H. Beardsley, L. C. Haines, Scott M. Loftin, John T. Dismukes, Dr. Andrew Anderson, W. W. Dewhurst, Eugene Masters, S.O. Chase, J. C. Chase, and Judge Couper Gibbs. In 1926 a building in downtown Miami was named in memory of James Ingraham by the Model Land Company. * * * From the 1895 Tatler Mr. James E. Ingraham, commissioner of lands for the East Coast Canal Company and the Jacksonville, St. Augustine and Indiaian River railroad, has completed and issued an exceedingly readable book, giving the statics of the four counties along the east coast --- St. Johns, Volusia, Brevard and Dade, showing the crops that adapted to them, information about the public schools, health statistics and the death rate, and the lands, giving price and climiatic conditions. Mr. Ingraham publisheds valuable letters from actual settlers who give their experience for the benefit of prospective settlers. Among the crops adapted to St. Johns county, judging from the letters, are vegetables of all kinds, onions and potatoes being especially profitable; strawberries that ripen from February to June and longer when sheltered from the sun; sugar cane, grapes, rice in special places, grass, Bermuda and Guinea grass and Alfafa clover. Cattle may be bred at slight cost. Game is abundant; fishing and the land readily cultivated and to be purchased at reasonable prices. .... Mr. Ingraham also prints a report from the United States Agricultural Bureau showing that peacan trees may be grown almost without cultivation and made profitable in a few years; that those grown in the State are free from worms. There is also much valuable information about the use of fertilizers, handling the crop cost of clearing the ground and the soil best adapted to certain crops. The book is to be sent to any address on application. |
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