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 House to Chester A. Arthur, and was instrumental in getting him appointed collector of the port of New York in 1871. In 1872 Conkling was offered the position of Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court by Grant, but he refused. When Rutherford B. Hayes became president in 1877, Conkling violently opposed him on the issue of civil service reform. In 1880, Conkling, as part of the "Stalwart" faction of the Republican Party, supported Grant's bid for a third term. The split in the Republican Party was so divisive that the 1880 Republican National Convention took 36 ballots to nominate James