James Covington Ingman has lived in Kansas since 1885, and accumulated and until recent years activsly managed a large amount of farming property in the vicinity of Barnes. He is now living retired, at the age of seventy-eight, and had made his own way in the world since early boyhood.
Mr. Ingman was born at Summerford in Madison County, Ohio, June 14, 1839. He is of English ancestry. One of his ancestors served in the Revolutionary war. The family were early settlers in Tennessee and later in Virginia. His graudfather, Henry Ingman was born in Virginia in 1777, and at an early date located in Ohio and was a farmer in Fairfield County until his death in 1863. He married Henrietta Rigby, also a flative of Virginia, and she died in Fairfield County, Ohio.
Otho William Ingman, father of James C., was born in Fairfield County, Ohio, in 1813, a date which indieates the very early settlement of the family there. He grew up and marrled in his native county and was an industrious worker nearly all his life at the blacksmith’s trade. From Fairfield he removed to Madison County, where his son James C. was born, and later to Union County, Ohio, and died at Marysville in that county in 1869. He began voting as a whig and subsequently affiliated with the republican party. He was a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church and of the Masonic fraternity. Otho W. Ingman married Matilda Birky, who was born at Newark in Licking County, Ohio, in 1815 and died at Summerford in 1852. Her children were: Samuel, deceased; James C.; Theodore and Maria, deceased; Fannie E., who is unmarried and lives at Muskogee, Oklahoma; and Conrad M., deceased. For his second wife the father married Elizabeth Turner, who was born in Madison County and died in Union County, Ohio. By this marriage there were three children: Lydia, who lives at Muskogee, Oklahoma, widow of William Smith, a hotel man; Henrietta is the wife of Al. Hare, a real estate man in Oklahoma; and Otho, a merchant tailor at Mechaniesburg, Ohio.
James C. Ingman received his early education in the rural schools of Fairfield County, Ohio, and also attended an academy at London in that state. From the age of ten years he was employed more or less regularly at the occupation of farming. In the spring of 1864 he enlisted in Company I of the One Hundred and Fifty-ninth Ohio Infantry, and was in service with that regiment until mustered out in September, 1864. Previously, in 1863, he had assisted in organizing the Ohio State Guards.
After the war Mr. Ingman lived for the most part in Fairfield County, Ohio, until he came to Kansas in 1885 and located at Barnes. As a farmer he was more than ordinarily successful and he still owned a place of forty acres in Barnes Township, another of 160 acres in Little Blue Township, and another quarter section in the same township. His home is a half mile north of Barnes. In politics Mr. Ingman is a progressive republican, is past noble grand of Amanda Lodge No. 548, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, in Ohio, and was formerly affiliated with Barnes Post of the Grand Army of the Republic.
On August 12, 1860, in Fairfield County, Ohio, he married Miss Telitha Jane Swope. She was born in Fairfield County, in 1838, and died at Barnes, Kansas, in June, 1912, two months prior to their fiftieth wedding anniversary. Eight children were born to their marriage. Ada, the oldest, died unmarried at Barnes, in 1913. Samuel is a contractor and electrician living at Savannah, Georgia. Lefever died on the home farm at Barnes in 1890, at the age of twenty-seven. Theodore, who makes his home with his father, is county agent for the Farmers Union, with offices in Washington, Kansas. R. L. is a contractor and railroad man in Old Mexico. Bertha is still at home. Myrtle Matilda died in Ohio, aged two years. C. B. Ingman, the youngest child, had taken a homestead of 320 acres in Oklahoma.