Hi Listers,
Following is the page devoted to this 'behind the scenes' First Lady of SC.
She can be found on pages 61 and 89 in A Genealogy of the Ingersoll Family in
America 1629-1925 by Lillian Drake Avery (the Ingersoll "bible"). Avery gives
additional details about Alice Cornelia Ingersoll Chamberlain.
Alice was a 5th. cousin of my great grandfather, Willard B. Ingersoll (page
77, #254 in Avery). I think that makes her my 7th. cousin, twice removed.
The author of the Behind the Scenes...Helen Milliken, will be the speaker at
the next Sumter Genealogy meeting, and I would like to be able to give her
additional information on Alice, if anyone out there has any.
Please contact me on the list or at gfjay(a)aol.com.
Geraldine Ingersoll
South Carolina
Alice Ingersoll Chamberlain
With South Carolina depressed and still recovering from the Civil War,
the new Governor’s Mansion was in dire need of improvements. So one of the
Chamberlain Administration’s lasting contributions to the office was the
couple’s insistence on living in their own private residence while devoting
rent money to repairs.
Daniel Henry Chamberlain married Alice Ingersoll of Bangor, Maine, on
December 16, 1867. Chamberlain was a native of West Brookfield, Mass. and
product of a farming family: Eli and Achsah (Forbes) Chamberlain. The couple
moved to Columbia the following year where Chamberlain practiced law and
became a member of the S.C. constitutional convention. They had one son,
Waldo. Chamberlain served as attorney general of S.C. from 1868-72 and was
elected governor in 1874.
Gov. Chamberlain earned a reputation as a noted reformer of state
politics partly because he had the luxery-he was independently wealthy. After
he was elected, the Chamberlains decided not to occupy the Governor’s Mansion
because the building needed major repairs: it had previously been a military
academy and was burned during Sherman’s march to the sea. The Chamberlains
instead bought and lived in the Boylson House which was directly across the
street from the mansion. One of the couple’s lasting contributions was the
construction of a new iron fence around the grounds of the mansion (the
earlier one had been destroyed).
In 1876, Gov. Chamberlain was re-nominated by Republicans to face
Democratic nominee Wade Hampton. Chamberlain won the election, but Democrats
challenged the election results, established a rival government, and
inaugurated Hampton. Both governors claimed authority until April 1877 when,
as part of the Compromise of 1877, Pres. Rutherford Hayes withdrew federal
troops from South Carolina and deprived Chamberlain of his source of power.
Chamberlain was forced to leave office and the family eventually left South
Carolina as well. He practiced law in New York and earned a professorship of
Constitutional Law at Cornell 1883. Mrs. Chamberlain died in 1887.
In a memoir of Chamberlain, lifelong friend James Green said his wife’s
loss was devastating to the former governor. Mrs. Chamberlain was his “most
trusted companion and most sympathetic friend. This loss to him was
irreparable and saddened all his later years.” and in an 1888 account of the
Chamberlain administration, the author dedicated the book to Mrs. Chamberlain
“whose early wedded life was both shadowed and exalted herein...whose
faithful interest preserved important parts of this record; whose wifely
counsel and sympathy made her a large sharer in all that was achieved and all
that was endured by her husband while governor.”
Alice Ingersoll Chamberlain b. unknown, d. 1887,
wife of Gov. Daniel Henry Chamberlain (1874-77 as a Republican), b June 23,
1835, d. April 13, 1907
Taken from Helen Milliken’s book, BEHIND THE SCENES Sketches of Selected
South Carolina Ladies, page 50.
Copyright 2001 Heritage information Fund Press/The Palmetto Trust for
Historic Preservation and Palmetto Conservation Foundation.
Published in Spartanburg, SC by Heritage Information Fund Press
PO Box 1984
Spartanburg, SC 29304