Background
Ralph Ingersoll Lockwood was born on July 8, 1798 at Greenwich, Connecticut, United States, the son of Stephen and Sarah (Ingersoll) Lockwood. Although members of the family held no positions of national importance, it was, nevertheless, a distinguished one. Robert, the founder of the family in America, emigrated from England about 1630 and settled first in Watertown, Massachusetts, and later in Fairfield, Connecticut. During Colonial and Revolutionary times, many of his descendants held military offices, and by the year 1834 eleven had graduated from Yale College. Ralph was the fourth of a family of eight children. In March 1821, his parents moved to Mount Pleasant, now Ossining, Westchester County, New York, where the father purchased a farm of 100 acres.
Education
Ralph and his two younger brothers, Albert and Munson, studied law.
Career
Albert and Munson practised in Westchester County--Albert eventually becoming county judge--but Ralph moved to New York City and there practised for the remainder of his life. His wit and eloquence attracted attention, and he soon became one of the well-known lawyers of the city.
When he was twenty-seven years old he published a vigorous analysis of the problems confronting Congress in the enactment of a national bankruptcy act (Essay on a National Bankrupt Law, 1825) in which he discussed the mooted question as to whether the benefits of the law should be extended to all classes or confined solely to the trading class, himself advocating a middle course.
He was severely critical of what he termed "the faults and absurdities of the English common law. " His interest lay in the field of equity and he became, in time, one of the leading chancery lawyers of the state. Reverence for the courts he did not regard as a duty and his attacks upon the decisions of the court of chancery were distinguished for their vigor and fearlessness. In addition to his capabilities as a lawyer he had a natural interest in literature and was an excellent French scholar. He visited France upon two occasions and for a number of years acted as counsel for the leading French citizens of New York City.
In 1848 he published Analytical and Practical Synopsis of All the Cases Argued and Reversed, in Law and Equity, in the Court for the Correction of Errors, of New York, 1799 to 1847; he also edited the American edition of J. E. Bright's A Treatise on the Law of Husband and Wife (2 vols. , 1850). Lockwood was the author of two novels, Rosine Laval (1833) and The Insurgents (2 vols. , 1835). Both were published anonymously, Rosine Laval appeared under the pseudonym, "Mr. Smith. "
He had long cherished an ambition to write fiction, and when forced to leave New York temporarily to escape a plague of the cholera he found himself with sufficient leisure to gratify it. In thirty minutes the plot was conceived and in six weeks Rosine Laval was finished. A nervous breakdown, induced by overwork, gave him the leisure to write The Insurgents, which was completed in three months. Neither of the two, from the literary point of view, is valuable and only in the most exhaustive histories of American literature is it possible to find any mention of them.
Rosine Laval was intended to be a light novel, but its humor is of a past generation, and the swoonings and the harrowing death, which seemed to the author necessary occurrences before the love problem could be resolved, are unconvincing. The Insurgents, a novel of Shays's Rebellion, was a more serious undertaking. The same faults which mar Rosine Laval are present, however, and reveal that Lockwood, whatever his accomplishments as a lawyer, was not possessed of marked aptitude for the writing of fiction. In the preface to his first novel he wrote that he had for several years threatened to fall seriously in love and to marry, but when he died he was still a bachelor.
Membership
In December 1838, he was elected a member of the New York Law Library, later the New York Law Institute.
