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
Alfred Conkling Coxe Sr. Roscoe Conkling, who was a Congressman and Senator from New York and boss of the state's Republican political machine. He was also the nephew of Arthur Cleveland Coxe, the Episcopal bishop of Western New York, and grandson of abolitionist minister Samuel Hanson Cox. Coxe's son, Alfred Conkling Coxe Jr., also became a federal judge, serving on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York from 1929 to 1957. Another son, Howard Coxe, was a newspaperman and novelist, and his grandson Louis O. Coxe was a poet and playwright best known for writing the Broadway version of