This eye-catching memorial to former US Senator John James Ingalls, who had a long history of service to Kansas, stands at Mt. Vernon Cemetery in Atchison KS;
He is buried in a family plot marked by a large red boulder of Kansas stone, and has an individual tombstone as well.
The family tombstone reads as follows:
"INGALLS
When the fitful fever is ended, and the foolish wrangle of the market and forum is closed, grass heals over the scar which our descent into the bosom of the earth has made, and the carpet of the infant becomes the blanket of the dead."
Sen. Ingall's individual tombstone is made of polished and rough red granite, as follows:'
"JOHN JAMES INGALLS
Dec 29, 1833
Aug 16, 1900"
From Wikipedia: (
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"John James Ingalls (December 29, 1833 – August 16, 1900) was an American politician.
Life and career
John James Ingalls was born in Middleton, Massachusetts, on December 29, 1833. He graduated from Williams College in 1855. Foreshadowing his later reputation as a wit, his commencement oration, entitled "Mummy Life," was a satire of college life. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1857. Moving to Kansas Territory, Ingalls settled in Atchison in 1860. He joined the anti-slavery forces and worked to make Kansas a free state. He was a member of the Wyandotte constitutional convention in 1859 and is reputed to have coined the state motto, Ad Astra per Aspera.
When Kansas was admitted to the Union in 1861, he became secretary of the first state Senate and state senator in 1862. During the Civil War he served as judge advocate in the Kansas militia. As an editor of the Atchison newspaper, Freedom's Champion, for three years, he won a national reputation for a series of magazine articles. Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1873, succeeding Samuel C. Pomeroy, Ingalls served for 18 years. He supported labor and agriculture against monopolies. He also favored the Interstate Commerce Act and the Pendleton Civil Service Act. Ingalls rejected the nomination of James Campbell Matthews to the recorder of deeds in 1886. Ingalls claimed that his rejection was because of Matthews' non-residency of Washington, D.C.; however, journalists argued that his rejection was racially-based.
In 1887 Ingalls was elected President pro tempore of the Senate. Praised throughout his life for his keen sarcasm and quick wit, John James Ingalls died in Las Vegas, New Mexico on August 16, 1900. He was buried at Mount Vernon Cemetery in Atchison.
In 1905, the state of Kansas donated a marble statue of Ingalls to the U.S. Capitol's National Statuary Hall Collection. In 2011, Kansas had plans to replace Ingalls with Amelia Earhart.
Personal life
John James Ingalls was a second cousin of Charles Ingalls (father to Little House on the Prairie's Laura Ingalls Wilder)."