Baron Trump's Marvelous Underground Journey

A fun classic book for the whole family to enjoy. It's proven the test of time and is relevant even in this day and age. Your kids will be excited as you read it to them before they go to bed. In these books, the young German protagonist, Wilhelm Heinrich Sebastian Von Troomp, better known as Baron Trump, with a brain so big that his head has grown to twice the normal size, travels around and under the globe with his dog Bulger, meeting residents of as-of-yet undiscovered lands before arriving back home at Castle Trump.

Ingersoll Lockwood is particularly known today for his Baron Trump children's novels. However, he wrote other children's novels, as well as the dystopian novel, 1900: or; The Last President, a play, and several non-fiction works. He wrote some of his non-fiction under the pseudonym Irwin Longman.

Lockwood was born in Ossining, New York, the son of Munson Ingersoll and Sarah Lewis (née Smith) Lockwood. Munson Lockwood, like his two older brothers, Ralph and Albert, was a lawyer and intimate friend of Henry Clay. However, Munson primarily achieved prominence during his military service and civic activism. He was a general in the New York State Militia and commandant of its 7th Brigade. He was also one of the founders of Ossining's first bank and Dale Cemetery and served as the Warden of Sing Sing prison from 1850 to 1855.

• Like his father and uncles, Ingersoll Lockwood trained as a lawyer, although his first position was as a diplomat. ​
• In 1862 he was appointed Consul to the Kingdom of Hanover by Abraham Lincoln. ​
• At the time he was the youngest member of the U.S. consular force and served in that post for four years. ​
• On his return he established a legal practice in New York City with his older brother Henry.​
• By the 1880s Lockwood had established a parallel career as a lecturer and writer. ​

Lockwood spent his retirement years in Saratoga Springs, New York where he published his last book, a collection of poetry entitled In Varying Mood, or, Jetsam, Flotsam and Ligan in 1912. It opens with juxtaposed photographs of Lockwood at age 35 and at age 70. In the preface, he wrote:

• The end has almost come.
• I'm only waiting for the signal to push off and begin my voyage to the Isles of the Blest in the far Western Seas.
• I was troubled in my mind at first, for my little bark, staunch though it may be, sat too deep in the water.
• It was overladen with conceits that wouldn't be current and merchandise that wouldn't be saleable in the Isles of the Blest.
• Overboard with it!
• Now that I have lightened ship I feel better.

Lockwood died in Saratoga Springs five years later, in 1918, at the age of 77.