[4] He was born on November 1, 1860,[5] in Philadelphia, one of seven sons,[6] to Dr. Richard Alexander Fullerton Penrose and Sarah Hannah Boies.

[8] The family traced their American origins to Bartholomew Penrose, a Bristol shipbuilder, who was invited by William Penn to establish a shipyard in the Province of Pennsylvania.

After reading the law with the firm of Wayne MacVeagh and George Tucker Bispham,[13] he was admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar in 1883.

[14] He was forced to withdraw from the race when his Democrat opponent released a photo of Penrose leaving a brothel at three o'clock in the morning.

[3] Penrose was elected Chairman of the State Republican Party in 1903, succeeding fellow Senator Matthew Quay.

[19] He was the most powerful political operative in Pennsylvania for the next 17 years[20] and enabled figures like Richard Baldwin to advance through loyalty to his organization.

He publicly campaigned for the first time in his life and defeated Democrat A. Mitchell Palmer and Progressive Gifford Pinchot.

[15] In November 1915, Penrose accompanied the Liberty Bell on its nationwide tour to the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco to raise money for World War I.

[30] He did not like people watching him eat and had screens set up to provide privacy when he dined at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia.

(Bill) Manson, they had to spend a lot of time to find a horse big enough to carry Penrose and his custom saddle.

[34] Penrose died on December 31, 1921,[14] in his Wardman Park penthouse suite in Washington, D.C. in the last hour of 1921, after suffering a pulmonary thrombosis.

[35] A bronze statue of Penrose by Philadelphia sculptor Samuel Murray was erected in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania's Capitol Park in September 1930.