Orrin Henry Ingram Sr.

Orrin Henry Ingram Sr. was born on June 26, 1904, in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. His father, Erskine B. Ingram, was a lumber heir.^[1] His mother was Harriet Coggshall. His parents were members of the Congregational Church.

His paternal grandfather three times removed, David Ingram, had immigrated from Leeds, England, in 1780.^[2] His paternal grandfather, Orrin Henry Ingram, was a lumber baron in Wisconsin.^[1][2][3] His great-uncle, Julius Ingram, was a member of the Wisconsin State Assembly.

In 1928, Ingram ran a textile firm in Tennessee owned by his wife's family.^[1][4] He relocated it to Nashville, Tennessee.^[1] By 1937, at the time of the textile strike, he sold half his investment and acquired Wood River Oil and Refining, an oil company based in St. Louis, Missouri.^[4]

He was the owner of Ingram Oil & Refining, a chain of 240 gas stations headquartered in Meraux, Louisiana, just outside New Orleans.^[1][5] In 1961, he sold the company to Murphy Oil.^[1][5]

Ingram served as the Vice President of the Board of Trust of Vanderbilt University in Nashville from 1952 to 1963.^[6][7]

Ingram married Hortense Bigelow, the daughter of the president of the St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Co. (later known as The Travelers Companies).^[4] They resided in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, Hobe Sound, Florida, and Nashville, Tennessee.^[3][4] They had two sons, E. Bronson Ingram II and Frederic B. Ingram, and a daughter, Alice, who married Henry William Hooker.^[8]

He died of a heart attack on April 25, 1963, in Nashville, Tennessee.^[3][9][10] He was buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Nashville.

The Hank Ingram House on the campus of Vanderbilt University was named in his honor in 2006.^[6][11]