The younger Ingersoll completed Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven in 1762, graduated from Yale College in 1766, studied law in Philadelphia, and was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1773. Although by training and inclination a Patriot sympathizer, the young Ingersoll shied away from the cause at the outset because of a strong sense of personal loyalty to his distinguished father. On his father's advice, he sought to escape the growing political controversy at home by retiring to London to continue his study of the law at the Middle Temple School (1773–76) and to tour extensively through Europe. He spent more than eighteen months in Paris, where he formed the acquaintance of Benjamin Franklin.