Ernest "Ernie" C. Quigley was born March 22, 1880 in Newcastle, New Brunswick, Canada, the son of Lawrence B. and Mary J. Weir Quigley. Sometime in Quigley's first decade of life the family moved to Kansas, first Atchison and later Concordia.

After attending Concordia High School and lettering in both football and baseball, Quigley enrolled in the University of Kansas. While at KU, he participated in several athletic activities, including football and track. Abandoning a career in law, Quigley served first as football coach at Missouri State Normal School in Warrensburg, MO and then athletics director at St. Mary's College in St. Marys, Kansas.

Quigley joined the Topeka White Sox in 1905 as a professional baseball player in the early days of profesional baseball. He played with several other Kansas-based teams before moving to Wisconsin to join the Green Bay Bays. There he broke his hand and agreed to take over as umpire with the Wisconsin-Illinois League.

In 1913, Quigley began serving as an umpire in the National League. He continued to officiate at major league baseball games for 26 years, including 38 games in six different World Series. He also officiated at several college basketball and football games as referee, the first year-round major sports official in the U.S. This work included referring at the 1936 basketball playoff tournament in Boston, MA to determine the United States' entry into the Berlin Olympics, the first year that basketball was a sport at the Olympics.

Quigley retired from serving as umpire in 1936, becoming the National League's first supervisor of umpires. In 1940 he became the league's first full-time director of public relations. In 1944, he resigned from the National League and returned to the University of Kansas as athletics director. He retired from KU in 1950.

Ernie C. Quigley married Margaret S. Darlington in 1906. They had two sons, Ernest C. "Mike," Jr., and Henry H. "Heinie." Quigley died on December 10, 1960.

[Information retrieved from Gerlach, Larry R., "Ernie Quigley: An Official for All Seasons," in Kansas History Winter 2010: 218-239, available online at https://www.kshs.org/publicat/history/2010winter_gerlach.pdf.]