Roscoe Arbuckle a feature film. Roscoe Conkling Arbuckle was born on March 24, 1887, in Smith Center, Kansas, one of nine children of Mary E. "Mollie" Gordon (d. February 19, 1898) and William Goodrich Arbuckle. He weighed in excess of at birth and, as both parents had slim builds, his father believed the child was not his. Consequently, he named the baby after a politician (and notorious philanderer) whom he despised, Republican senator Roscoe Conkling of New York. The birth was traumatic for Mollie and resulted in chronic health problems that contributed to her death 12 years later. When Arbuckle was nearly
Roscoe Conkling him to speak on behalf of victims of starvation at various venues in Central New York. Additionally, as Theodore M. Pomeroy recalls, even fifteen years before the Civil War Roscoe displayed a deep abhorrence for slavery, or as he described it, "man's inhumanity to man." He married Julia Catherine Seymour, sister of the Democratic politician and Governor of New York Horatio Seymour. His first political endeavor came in 1848, when he made campaign speeches on behalf of Taylor and Fillmore. He was admitted to the bar in 1850, and in the same year became district attorney of Oneida County by