It’s always surprising how finding an interesting story can lead down a trail to even far more interesting stories. I was looking through some old newspapers last Saturday and came across this article in an 1861 Providence, Rhode Island, paper. “A duel recently took place at West Point, Mississippi, between a Mr. P. Cash and James Kinney. The weapons used were bowie knives. Cash was killed. Credit was killed in that state some time ago. How they’re going to get along without credit or cash we can hardly see.”
Being a cold icy day, it was a perfect time to go off on a tangent and look up old accounts of dueling with a Bowie knife. Of course, the most famous of those fights was James Bowie’s 1828 fight in Natchez. I found an account of that fight in the Daily Commercial of Vicksburg. It all started when Bowie was challenged to a duel by a “gentleman” from Alexandria, Louisiana. The accepted challenge was to “exchange shots twice with pistols, and to close with knives.” Bowie was, of course, “armed with his own terrible weapon,” the large knife he had made, which was named after him.
The duel took place in a field on “the heights of Natchez,” which was thronged with spectators. There was even a steamboat in the river, “its deck black with passengers watching with deep interest the scene.” Each duelist brought with him his second, a surgeon and about 20 armed friends. The duel ultimately erupted into a pitched battle between both groups. Even the surgeons were said to have “crossed blades.” Several persons, including the gentleman from Louisiana, were killed, and many, including Bowie, were wounded. Bowie, using his knife, was said to have “fought like a lion, but fell covered with wounds.” His recovery in Natchez took several months.
I came across a familiar name, the Rev Joseph H. Ingraham, while further reading old newspapers about dueling with bowie knives. Joseph Holt Ingraham became rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Aberdeen in 1851. In 1851 and 1852, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Columbus was without a rector and Ingraham also held regular church services there. He was later at a Church in Mobile and became rector of Christ Episcopal Church in Holly Springs in 1858. He died there after a shooting accident in 1861.
I have previously written about him because he wrote a historical fiction novel about Moses titled, “The Pillar of Fire or Israel in Bondage” in 1858. Cecile B. DeMille used that novel 96 years later for much of the screenplay of “The Ten Commandments.” Ingraham is given a top billing as writer in the movie’s credits.
So what does dueling with Bowie knives have to do with the Rev. Ingraham? Well, a lot more than you might think. Ingraham was born into a shipbuilding family in Portland, Maine, in 1809. He ventured to New Orleans in 1830, where he studied law. He moved to Natchez, where he practiced law and taught at Jefferson College in Washington, Mississippi, just outside Natchez. There, he and a friend, Dr. S.M. Tibbits fell in love with the same girl. The rest of the story was told in several 1880s Mississippi and Tennessee newspapers.
Ingraham’s and Tibbits’s friendship turned to hate, and they decided that a duel-to-the-death should determine who could ask for the girl’s hand in marriage. According to newspaper accounts, the two “principals were armed with rifles, revolvers and bowie knives. They had more confidence in the continuation of their hate than in the accuracy of their aim. The rifles were to be discharged first at twenty paces; if neither combatant was killed they were to advance, firing their revolvers at will, and if they still lived, the battle was to be continued with the knives.”
The two former friends met just outside the little town of Grand Gulf with only their seconds. The men stood at their places, and the word to fire was given. Ingraham was shot through his cheek with Tibbits’s first shot and fell to the ground unconscious but alive. The duel was ended with Tibbits having the right to ask for the girl’s hand in marriage.
However, Tibbits’s marksmanship did not win her hand as the girl’s family, hearing of the duel, removed her to another part of the state and away from both Tibbits and Ingraham. Ingraham decided to become a minister not long after recovering from his wound. He was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1851 with Aberdeen as his first church.
He died in 1861 from the accidental discharge of his own pistol. I found three different accounts of the fatal accident. In one, the pistol discharged after he had picked it up from a gunsmith that had made repairs to it. The other two accounts occurred at his church. In one of the other two accounts, the pistol fell out of a desk drawer and discharged, and in the other, it fell out of his pocket at the conclusion of a sermon and discharged.
So it was that Joseph Ingraham became a minister after losing but surviving what was to be a fight-to-the-death for the hand of a girl.
Rufus Ward is a local historian. Email your questions about local history to him at [email protected].
Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].
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