1800-1881
Daniel P. Ingraham was born in New York City on April 20, 1800. He was descended from Dutch and English families long active in the City’s business and public affairs. Ingraham graduated from Columbia College in 1817 and studied law under Richard Riker who served three terms as Recorder of New York City. From 1835 to 1837, Ingraham served as a City Alderman. In 1838, he was appointed by Governor Marcy to fill a vacancy on the Court of Common Pleas. Ingraham served on that court until his election as a Justice of the Supreme Court in 1857. In 1864, Justice Ingraham was appointed an ex officio Judge of the New York Court of Appeals.[1] He was reelected to the Supreme Court in 1865. In 1869, on the adoption of a revised Judiciary Article of the State Constitution, Ingraham was appointed Presiding Justice of the General Term of the Supreme Court for the First Department. He remained in that position until the expiration of his term of office in 1874. [2]
Judge Ingraham, in his long career on the bench, possessed uniformly the highest confidence and respect of the profession and the public. His judicial abilities were of a very superior order, and to these he added great conscientiousness, dignity and courtesy.[3]
Ingraham’s son, George Landon Ingraham, born in 1847, went on to serve as one of the first Associate Justices of the Appellate Division, First Department, at its formation in 1896, and later served as Presiding Justice from 1910 to his retirement in 1915.
Daniel P. Ingraham died on December 12, 1881.
[1] Pursuant to the Constitution of 1847, the Court of Appeals consisted of four judges elected to eight-year terms and four Judges who rotated in and out on a yearly basis. This organizational structure was ended by the Constitution of 1869. Rosenblatt, ed., The Judges of the New York Court of Appeals, Fordham Univ. Press, 2007, at xxxii.
[2] History of the Bench and Bar of New York, New York History Co., 1897, at 365-66.
[3] Id. at 366.