Roscoe Conkling - Early Life

Early Life

Conkling was born in 1829 in Albany, New York to Alfred Conkling, a U.S. Representative and federal judge and his wife Eliza Cockburn. At 17, Roscoe began the study of law in the offices of Spencer and Kernan in Utica, New York. 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 in 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 appointment of Governor Fish.

In 1852 he returned to Utica, where in the next few years he established a reputation as a lawyer of ability. Up to 1852, in which year he stumped New York State for General Winfield Scott, the Whig candidate for the presidency, Conkling was identified with the Whig Party, but in the movement that resulted in the organization of the Republican Party he took an active part, and his work, both as a political manager and an orator, contributed largely toward carrying New York in 1856 for Frémont and Dayton, the Republican nominees.