AKA Robert Green Ingersoll

Born: 11-Aug-1833
Birthplace: Dresden, NY
Died: 21-Jul-1899
Location of death: Walston, Dobbs Ferry-on-Hudson, NY
Cause of death: Heart Failure
Remains: Cremated, Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, VA

Gender: Male
Religion: Agnostic
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Author
Party Affiliation: Republican

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Orator, politician, agnostic

Military service: Union Army (11th Illinois Cavalry, 1861-63, captured)

American lawyer, lecturer and freethinker, born in Dresden, New York, on the 11th of August 1833. His father was a Congregational minister, who removed to Wisconsin in 1843 and to Illinois in 1845. Robert, who had received a good common-school education, was admitted to the bar in 1854, and practiced law with success in Illinois. Late in 1861, during the Civil War, he organized a cavalry regiment, of which he was colonel, until captured at Lexington, Tennessee on the 18th of December 1862, by the Confederate cavalry under General Nathan Bedford Forrest. He was paroled, waited in vain to be exchanged, and in June 1863 resigned from the service. He was attorney-general of Illinois in 1867-69. and in 1876 his speech in the Republican National Convention, nominating James G. Blaine for the Presidential candidacy, won him a national reputation as a public speaker. As a lawyer he distinguished himself particularly as counsel for the defendants in the "Star-Route Fraud" trials. He was most widely known, however, for his public lectures attacking the Bible, and his anti-Christian views were an obstacle to his political advancement. Ingersoll was an eloquent rhetorician rather than a logical reasoner. He died at Dobbs Ferry, New York on the 21st of July 1899. His complete works were published in 12 volumes in New York in 1900.

Father: John Ingersoll
Mother: Mary Ingersoll (d. when Robert was one-and-a-half)
Brother: Ebon Clarke Ingersoll (with whom he was a law partner for 20 years)
Wife: Eva Amelia Parker (of Groveland, IL, m. 13-Feb-1862)
Daughter: Eva Robert (b. 1863)
Daughter: Maud Robert (b. 1864)

    Taken Prisoner of War Battle of Lexington (18-Dec-1862), four days

Author of books:
The Gods and Other Lectures (1876)
Some Mistakes of Moses (1879)
Prose Poems (1884)
Great Speeches (1887)

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