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 Mayor of Utica in 1858, and then elected as a Republican to the 36th and 37th United States Congresses, holding office from March 4, 1859, to March 3, 1863. He was Chairman of the U.S. House Committee on the District of Columbia (37th Congress). He refused to follow the financial policy of his party in 1862, and delivered a notable speech against the passage of the Legal Tender Act, which made a certain class of treasury notes receivable for all public and private debts. In this opposition he was joined by his brother, Frederick Augustus Conkling, at that time also