Samuel Delucenna Ingham

Background

Ingham was born on September 16, 1779 at near New Hope, Pennsylvania, United States, the son of Dr. Jonathan and Ann (Welding) Ingham. His father, a farmer as well as a physician.

Education

His father sent Samuel at ten years of age to a school at some distance from home. Before he attained his fourteenth year, the death of his father made further attendance at school impossible. He was then apprenticed to a paper maker on Pennypacker Creek about fifteen miles from Philadelphia, but was able to continue his studies in his spare time.

Career

At the age of nineteen Ingham was released from his indenture and returned to the farm, where he assisted his mother for a year. He then became manager of a paper mill near Bloomfield, New Jersey.

In 1800 he returned to Pennsylvania and built a paper mill at New Hope. He took an active interest in local politics and was elected from Bucks County to the state House of Representatives in 1806, serving until 1808 when he declined reëlection because of the pressure of his business affairs. In this year, however, he received an unsolicited commission from the governor of Pennsylvania as justice of the peace. After the declaration of war in 1812 he was elected as a Jeffersonian Democrat to the Thirteenth Congress, taking his seat at the March session of 1813. He was elected to the Fourteenth Congress by an increased majority and reëlected to the Fifteenth Congress without opposition, but on July 6, 1818, resigned his seat, largely because of his wife's health. In that year he became prothonotary of the court of common pleas of Bucks County and the following year, secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

His wife died in 1819 and he spent the next two years busied with his farming and manufacturing interests. In October, 1822 he was elected to the Seventeenth Congress. He remained in Congress, being reëlected each time without opposition, until he resigned his seat, March 4, 1829, to accept a position in Jackson's cabinet.

In 1824 he incurred the personal enmity of John Quincy Adams through the publication of a pamphlet on Adams' life and character which is alleged to have had great influence in the presidential campaign of 1828. Adams never forgave him for this attack and recorded much gossip and scandal regarding Ingham in his diary. Ingham was appointed secretary of the treasury by President Jackson, and served for a little more than two years.

On April 19, 1831, he resigned - though he continued in office till June 20 - ostensibly because he refused to recognize socially Mrs. John H. Eaton, the wife of Secretary of War John Henry Eaton and a great friend of President Jackson. After he resigned his cabinet post, Ingham retired from politics and devoted himself to business, becoming greatly interested in the development of the anthracite coal fields of Pennsylvania. In 1849 he moved his headquarters from New Hope, Pennsylvania, to Trenton, New Jersey, where he became interested in the Mechanics Bank of that city.

During his later years he was an invalid. He died in Trenton.

Achievements

• Samuel Delucenna Ingham was known as chair of the House Committee on the Post Office and Post Roads, and he was chair of the House Committee on Expenditures in the Post Office Department. He helped found the Beaver Meadow Railroad Company and was president for a time, assisted in forming the Hazelton Coal Company, and at the same time became interested in the Lehigh Navigation and Delaware Division canals. He spent much time at the state capitol in advocating the improvement of inland waterways.

Works

More photos

• book

  • An Exposition of the Political Character and Principles of John Quincy Adams (1827)

    (This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

Politics

Before 1825 Ingham was of Democratic-Republican views, but later became Democratic.

Membership

During the 1820s, Ingham was a member of the prestigious Columbian Institute for the Promotion of Arts and Sciences.

Connections

Ingham married Rebecca Dodd in 1800. She died in 1819. In 1822 he married Deborah Kay Hall of Salem, New Jersey. He had five children by his first marriage and three by his second.

Father:

Jonathan Ingham

Mother:

Ann (Welding) Ingham

Spouse:

Deborah Kay Hall

Spouse:

Rebecca Dodd

References

• Samuel Delucenna Ingham