his talent in debate, he made little impression on the country and none upon posterity ... The reason for this was that his wonderful gifts were wholly devoted to partisan discussions and local issues." A statue of him stands in Madison Square Park in New York City. Conkling is the namesake to the hamlets Roscoe, New York, Roscoe, South Dakota, and Roscoe, Georgia and Roscoe Conkling Park, a park in Utica, New York containing a zoo, golf course, and ski area. His house in Utica was made a National Historic Landmark in 1975. Conkling's stature as a powerful politician—and the interests of others in currying favor with him—led to many babies being named for him. These include Roscoe C. Patterson, Roscoe Conkling Oyer, Roscoe Conkling Bruce, and Roscoe C. McCulloch. Roscoe Conkling ("Fatty") Arbuckle's father, however, despised Conkling; he named the boy because he suspected the boy was not his and because of Conkling's known philandering. In popular culture Conkling was an important character in Rosemary Simpson's 2017 detective novel What the Dead Leave Behind. To spite his large son, whose delivery he believed hastened his petite wife's death and whose great size implied infidelity, William Goodrich Arbuckle named his child Roscoe Conkling Arbuckle in reference to the politician's numerous extramarital affairs. See also Seymour-Conkling family References Notes Further reading Biographical Burlingame, Sara Lee. "The Making of a Spoilsman: The Life and Career of Roscoe Conkling from 1829 to 1873." PhD dissertation Johns Hopkins U. 1974. 419 pp. Scholarly topical studies Eidson, William G. "Who Were the Stalwarts?" Mid-America 1970 52(4): 235–261. Graham, Howard Jay. "The 'Conspiracy Theory' of the Fourteenth Amendment". The Yale Law Journal. Vol. 47, No. 3. (January, 1938), pp. 371–403. Morgan, H. Wayne. From Hayes to McKinley: National Party Politics, 1877-1896 (1969) Peskin, Allan. Conkling, Roscoe American National Biography Online, (February 2000), (29 January 2007). Peskin, Allan. "Who Were the Stalwarts? Who Were Their Rivals? Republican Factions in the Gilded Age." Political Science Quarterly 1984-1985 99(4): 703–716. Fulltext: online in Jstor Reeves, Thomas C. "Chester A. Arthur and the Campaign of 1880". Political Science Quarterly. Vol. 84, No. 4. (December, 1969), pp. 628–637. Reeves, Thomas C. "Gentleman Boss: The Life of Chester Alan Arthur," (1975) (). Shores, Venila Lovina. The Hayes-Conkling Controversy, 1877-1879 (Smith College Studies in History, Vol. IV, No. 4, July, 1919), Northampton, MA, 1919. in The Spoils System in New York. Edited by