Charles Roberts Ingersoll was an American lawyer and the 47th Governor of Connecticut from 1873 to 1877.
Background
Ingersoll was born in New Haven, Connecticut, son of Ralph Isaacs Ingersoll, a New Haven lawyer who also served in the state House of Representatives, the United States Congress, and as United States Minister to Russia and as the mayor of New Haven, and of his wife, Margaret, née Van den Heuvel.
Education
He graduated from Yale College at the age of nineteen in 1840.
Career
They had six children. A daughter, Elizabeth, married George G. Haven, Junior.
Ingersoll entered politics in 1846, serving as clerk of the Connecticut Assembly, a position he was reelected to in 1856, 1857, 1858, 1866, and 1871. He was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention from Connecticut in 1864.
He served in the state legislature as a democrat.
Winning the 1873 Democratic gubernatorial nomination, Ingersoll was elected Governor of Connecticut. He was reelected in 1874, and 1875 serving from May 7, 1873 to January 3, 1877.
During his tenure, a state constitutional amendment was passed that lengthened the governor"s term to two years. Also, the state endured a financial depression that took six years to recover from, and Hartford—which was a co-capital with New Haven—was finally chosen as the sole lawmaking center.
Ingersoll did not run for reelection, and left office January 1877.
He continued to practice law, trying cases on the state and federal levels and in the United States. Supreme Court. He also was an organizer and vice president of the State Bar Association. Ingersoll died January 25, 1903 (age 81 years, 131 days), in New Haven and is interred at Grove Street Cemetery, New Haven, Connecticut.