US Congressman. He was born one of seven children (John Van Den Heuvel was born in 1815, Ralph Apthorp Ingersoll was born in 1817, Charles Roberts Ingersoll (later Governor of Connecticut) was born in 1819, Grace Suzette Ingersoll was born in 1823, and William Adrian Ingersoll was born in 1825, and Justine Henrietta Ingersoll was born in 1827), to the prominent lawyer and politician Ralph Isaacs Ingersoll and his wife Margaret Catherine Eleanor Van Den Heuvel Ingersoll in North Haven, Connecticut. He was educated locally and pursued academic studies. He also attended the prestigious Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where he was a founding member of the Phi Kappa Society (later known as the Alpha Delta Phi Chapter) while an undergraduate. He also attended Yale College Law Department where he studied law and graduated from in 1839. Following his graduation, he was admitted to the bar also in 1839 and commenced to practicing law in his hometown of New Haven, Connecticut. He then decided to enter politics and served as Clerk of the Connecticut State Senate in 1843. He was personally appointed by then then-President James Knox Polk to the position of the Secretary of the Legation at St. Petersburg, Russia, from 1847 to 1848. He also served as Acting Chargé d'Affaires in 1848. He then decided to run for a seat in the United States Congress and was elected in 1851. A Member of the Democratic Party, he then served Connecticut's 2nd District (Thirty-Second Congress and Thirty-Third Congress) in the United States House of Representatives from 1851 to 1855. After his term in the United States Congress expired on March 3, 1855, he was succeeded in office by United States Representative John Woodruff. Following his term in the United States Congress, he then resumed his law practice for a few years. During this time, he was married on October 16, 1853, to Julia Harriet Pratt (the daughter of Zadock Pratt, a leather tanner and founder of the city of Prattsville, Greene County, New York) in Prattsville, New York, and the couple would have five children together (Mary Elise Ingersoll was born in 1856, Julia Grace Ingersoll was born in 1856, Colin Macrae Ingersoll Jr. was born in 1858, George Pratt Ingersoll (later a prominent lawyer and politician) was born in 1861, and Maude Margaret Seymour Ingersoll was born in 1864). He lastly served as Adjutant General of Connecticut from 1867 to 1871, and as a Delegate to the Democratic National Convention from Connecticut in 1860, and again in 1876. He then again resumed his law practice until his death. He passed away from a prolonged illness of pneumonia on September 13, 1903, at the age of 85, in New Haven, Connecticut, and was buried in the famous Grove Street Cemetery in that city. His wife Julia passed away on March 13, 1898, at the age of 66, in Prattsville, New York, and she was buried beside her husband. His prominent family members besides his father Ralph Isaacs Ingersoll, brother Charles Roberts Ingersoll, and son George Pratt Ingersoll, also included his uncle Charles Anthony Ingersoll, grandson of Jonathan Ingersoll, first cousin twice removed of Jared Ingersoll, second cousin once removed of Charles Jared Ingersoll and Joseph Reed Ingersoll, third cousin once removed of Charles Edward Ingersoll, a fourth cousin of Laman Ingersoll, a fourth cousin once removed of Elijah Hunt Mills, Ebon Clarke Ingersoll and Robert Green Ingersoll. His maternal grandfather was Jan Cornelis Van den Heuvel, a Dutch-born plantation owner and politician who served as governor of the Dutch province of Demerara from 1765 to 1770, and who later became a merchant in New York City with the Dutch West India Company.