Background
Jared was born in 1722 in Milford, Connecticut, United States, the son of Jonathan and Sarah (Miles) Ingersoll. He was a grandson of John Ingersoll who emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629.
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Jared was born in 1722 in Milford, Connecticut, United States, the son of Jonathan and Sarah (Miles) Ingersoll. He was a grandson of John Ingersoll who emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629.
Prepared for college at home, Ingersoll entered Yale College from which institution he secured his bachelor's degree in 1742 and upon receiving a Berkeley scholarship remained at his alma mater for an additional year, reading law.
Ingersoll began practice in New Haven and before many years was at the top of the profession in the colony of Connecticut. In 1751 he was appointed king's attorney for the county of New Haven and in 1758 was commissioned by the Connecticut government to act as their London agent with the chief responsibility of securing for the colony reimbursement of money spent in the course of the war then going on between England and France. In this he was successful.
During the three years spent in London he made many friends among whom were Benjamin Franklin, representing the Pennsylvania legislature, and Thomas Whately, who later became a secretary to the Treasury in England.
Upon his return to Connecticut in 1761 he set himself to work to exploit the resources of the white pine woods on the upper Connecticut, having secured from the admiralty board a contract for ship masts. In this activity he was bitterly opposed by the Wentworth interests of New Hampshire, which for some time had enjoyed a virtual monopoly of the masting business so far as America was concerned, but he was supported by the Connecticut Assembly which sought to protect Ingersoll's interests by securing a separate vice-admiralty court for the colony.
In the fall of 1764, Ingersoll returned to England to secure another contract but found the Wentworth group in such high influence that he no longer pressed the project. Soon after his arrival he received notice from the Connecticut government that he had been appointed for a second time their London agent. He was instructed to oppose the stamp tax bill which Grenville had notified the colonies he was planning to bring into Parliament. Ingersoll thereupon joined with the other colonial agents in London to prevail upon the minister not to push the plan. The arguments of the latter apparently convinced Ingersoll of the justice of the measure and he set to work to influence the shaping of the bill at the Treasury office in such a way as to eliminate whatever features were especially disadvantageous to the colonials. When the bill passed Parliament Grenville decided to appoint prominent Americans, rather than Englishmen, as distributors or stamp masters for the different colonies, and Ingersoll was offered the post for Connecticut.
It is said that he accepted on the advice of Franklin, but instead of being commended by the people of that colony for his services in their behalf and especially for assuming the responsibility of administering an office which in the hands of a stranger might become oppressive, he soon found himself upon his return to Connecticut, early in August 1765, the object of a furious attack in the papers of New Haven and Hartford.
He stoutly maintained, however, that he would resign his commission only when called upon to do so by the Connecticut Assembly. In September Governor Fitch issued a call for the legislature to meet on the 19th of the month. Attempting to go to the Assembly, Ingersoll was met by a band of men from the eastern counties who escorted him to Wethersfield where after a prolonged struggle he was forced to write out a resignation. From Wethersfield the cavalcade, swollen now to about a thousand horsemen, proceeded to Hartford, where in the presence of the members of the Assembly gathered in front of the State House, Ingersoll read his resignation.
When later a proclamation had been issued against the rioters by the Governor, Ingersoll felt impelled to recall the resignation, but in the following January, in the face of renewed threats from the men of the eastern counties, he finally went before a justice of the peace and took an oath never to exercise his office.
After this Ingersoll retired to the post of local justice of the peace in New Haven, although in 1766 he was appointed a member of the New York-New Jersey boundary commission. During this period most of his efforts were given to his law practice and it is interesting to note that in 1766 he defended Benedict Arnold when he was indicted for whipping the informer Boles who sought to disclose Arnold's smuggling activities. He also acted as the agent for Lord Stirling's settlement project on the Penobscot River.
Meanwhile he was seeking preferment at the court and in 1768 he was rewarded with the appointment as judge of one of the four new courts of vice-admiralty created for America in that year, with Philadelphia as the permanent seat. In the spring of 1771 he moved to Philadelphia where he presided over his court without serious molestation until the outbreak of hostilities between the mother country and her colonies.
For the first two years of the war he lived in seclusion in Philadelphia. With the approach of General Howe, however, the patriotic party took active measures against the Loyalists, and Ingersoll was called upon to leave Philadelphia and return to New Haven. He went there on parole in September 1777 and remained until his death in August 1781.
Jared Ingersoll was known as the Agent of the New Haven Colony, who wrote a pamphlet on the "Stamp Act" (1766). When the act became law, Ingersoll accepted the position of Stamp Master of Connecticut. He was appointed Judge of the Vice Admiralty in the Middle District of America as a sort of amends for his ordeal in Connecticut.
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Federalist
Ingersoll was twice married: in 1743 to Hannah Whiting by whom he had a son, Jared, and in 1780 to Hannah Miles, the widow of Enos Alling.
