Christopher Columbus Andrews was born on October 27, 1829 in Hillsborough, New Hampshire, the son of Luther and Nabby (Beard) Andrews. He studied law and passed the Massachusetts bar exam in 1850.

Andrews went to the Kansas Territory in the 1850s, spending 6 months at Fort Leavenworth in 1854, to advocate for its admission as a free state to the Union. Later in the 1850s he moved to Minnesota to establish a law practice and became involved in state politics there, including winning election as Democrat to the State Senate. He published the Minnesota Union newspaper in 1861 to vocalize his support of President Abraham Lincoln.

At the oubreak of the Civil War, Andrews enlisted in the Third Minnesota Infantry. He was promoted to Company I's captain and captured at Murfreesboro in Tennessee in July 1862 and was exchanged back to the Union in October that same year.

Andrews continued to rise through the ranks, ending as major general in March 1865 and commanding the Mobile, Alabama district and implementing initial Reconstruction policies in Houston, Texas.

Andrews was honorably discharged from the Army early in 1866 and resumed his law practice at St. Cloud, MN. He served as a delegate to the 1868 Republican National Convention and was appointed as U.S. Minister to Sweden and Norway through much of the 1870s. In the 1880s he served as U.S. Consul General in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In the 1910s he authored a Minnesota Civl War Monuments Commission report providing recommendations for state monuments in Arkansas', Tennessee's, and Georgia's national military cemeteries, unveiling the Little Rock, AK National Cemetery's monument in 1916.

C.C. Andrews married Mary Frances Baxter in 1868. They had one daughter, Alice Ebba Andrews, born in 1869. Andrews died in 1922 or 1923.

[Information retrieved from Encyclopedia of Arkansas, "Christopher Columbus Andrews (1829-1923)," https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/christopher-columbus-andrews-8847/.]