Ingraham family papers (MSC-353)

This collection consists of three previously unknown manuscripts of historical significance along with a seventeenth century family bible. The first volume, which was wrapped in sailcloth, is a journal maintained by sailor Ferdinand Piper (1812-1844) while on board the U.S. Dolphin patrolling the south Atlantic and then on the U.S. Guerriere from 1830-1831. The second volume entitled, “Journal of a Cruise at Sea in the US Ship Plymouth by W. B. Hall, US Navy,” details the Plymouth’s cruise from Boston to St. John’s with a port of call in Newport. This manuscript also contains drawings, geometric and navigational problems (most likely while Wilburn Briggs Hall was studying at the U.S. Naval Academy) and a draft letter dated 6 June 1864 written by Hall while on board the CSS Virginia. In this letter, Hall requests to command one of the gunboats in the Confederate fleet during the Civil War. The last volume includes a rare firsthand account kept by Lieutenant John H. Ingraham, CSN about his service on the CSS Georgia, a Confederate raider that operated in South Atlantic waters, in 1863. John H. Ingraham wrote this “Summary of the Cruise of the C.S. Ship ‘Georgia’ in 1863” at an unknown date.

These reminiscences were later backed with linen and bound into volume along with mounted photographs of John H. Ingraham, his wife, and other officers that were also assigned to the Georgia; and newspaper clippings and letters from the 1930s-1950s about this volume. Also found within this collection is a family bible printed in an unidentifiable Eastern European language.