Hallowell’s Card Playing Addict
James Milk Ingraham was born in Hallowell, Maine, in 1803. He grew up in Hallowell alongside George Barrell Cheever, Jeremiah Dummer, Alfred Martin, and John Odlin Page, his future Bowdoin classmates. Ingraham appeared to be particularly close with Martin. They shared the same birthday of August 24, 1803, and they boarded together their freshman year at D. Stanwood’s. Another close friend of Ingraham’s was George Washington Pierce. Classmate Gorham Deane, reported at the start of the spring semester that Pierce and Ingraham would play cards together four or five hours each day, an activity expressly forbidden by the college. They only stopped when Deane forbade Ingraham from visiting Pierce and threatened to tell the college about the duo’s card-playing. Unfortunately for Ingraham, Deane’s silence did not stop the reprimands of Bowdoin’s officers. Ingraham was cited and fined at nearly every Executive Government meeting for neglecting his schoolwork and being absent from prayers. Finally, in May of 1822, the Government decided to remove Ingraham from the college until the Fall. Ingraham, however, never returned to Bowdoin. Little is known of his life after his expulsion. He worked as a merchant and lived in Hallowell and Portland, Maine. In 1856. he died while visiting Biddeford, Maine. He was 52 years old.