Rufus King: A Biography
The Early Years
Rufus King was born on a farm on March 24, 1755 in
Scarborough, Maine (then part of Massachusetts.)
He was the eldest son of Captain Richard King, a
successful merchant, and his first wife, Isabella
Bragdon.
At the age of 12, Rufus was sent to Dummer
Academy, one of the first private boarding
schools in colonial America.
King entered Harvard College during the
summer of 1773 at the age of 18.
In 1776, as Rufus entered his last year at
Harvard, the Declaration of Independence was
signed, telling King George III that the colonies
now considered themselves free from British
rule.
After Rufus graduated from Harvard first in his
class, he studied law and served in the
American Revolution. By 1783, the American
colonists had defeated the British troops. Rufus,
already a successful lawyer, entered state
politics in Massachusetts.
Rufus King:
Public Servant
After serving in the Massachusetts government for
several years, Rufus was selected to represent
Massachusetts in the Confederation Congress, the
new national government of the United States. This
government existed before George Washington
became President, and the capitol was New York City.
By 1787, it was obvious to many Americans that there
were problems with the government under the
Articles of Confederation. Rufus was one of the men
Massachusetts selected to travel to the Constitutional
Convention in Philadelphia to make a new American
government.
Rufus was picked to be one of five men to write
the Constitution and that autumn signed it for
Massachusetts.
Soon after the convention, Rufus moved to New
York and was elected to the New York Assembly.
He was then chosen to become one of the first
Senators representing New York.
After serving in the Senate for 7 years,
Rufus was appointed by President George
Washington to be the United States
Ambassador to England. He and his family
sailed to England, where they lived until
1803. When he returned to the United
States, Rufus began looking for a farm to
buy and continued his political career.
Jefferson
Pinckney
In the autumn of 1804, King was the
Federalist party’s nominee for VicePresident, with Charles C. Pinckney
as the Presidential nominee. The
two men lost to Thomas Jefferson
and New Yorker George Clinton.
Rufus and Charles Pinckney ran again
in 1808. Although they did better in this
election than in 1804, James Madison
and George Clinton were reelected.
Madison
In 1813, New York again selected
Rufus King to serve in the United States
Senate. In 1816, he lost to James
Monroe in the Presidential election,
becoming the last Federalist candidate
for the Presidency.
Monroe
He continued to serve in the Senate until 1825,
when he again traveled to England
as the United States ambassador.
Rufus’s years in the Senate were very busy.
He spent a lot of time working on laws and
considering how the United States should
interact with countries around the world.
He also spent a lot of time with or writing to his
family and loved his farm in Jamaica, Queens.
Rufus King:
Family and Farming
When Rufus first moved to New York, he lived in the
home of John Alsop and his daughter Mary Alsop.
Mary was described as “kind and benevolent”
and was said to be “the best looking woman in
New York City.”
Rufus and Mary’s wedding was described as “the
top wedding in the country.” Mary was
“...remarkable for her personal beauty, her motions
were grace, her bearing gracious, her voice
musical, and her education exceptional.”
Rufus and Mary eventually had five sons: John,
Charles, James, Edward, and Frederick.
When Rufus moved back to New York from
England, he brought with him an interest in farming
as science. He told his sons, “I MUST have a farm.”
In 1805, Rufus found the farm he wished to buy. He
wrote to his son John: “I have purchased a place in
the country, at the village of Jamaica. The house is
not fashionable but convenient...”
Rufus’s son Charles later wrote that “time and
money were liberally applied” in planting the
grounds. In addition to crops like wheat and
asparagus, thousands of trees were planted.
Pines and firs from New Hampshire, elms from
Massachusetts, and fruit trees from nurseries in
Flushing were planted. Some trees planted in 1810
grew and are today towering red oaks
not far from the house.
Rufus originally told his sons that there was
sufficient and good land for cattle to graze, and he
chose to import a herd of Devon cattle from England.
King Manor was a busy working farm, and Rufus
was a gentleman farmer who supervised the work
taking place on his farm.
Farming takes a lot of work, and Rufus hired, rather
than enslaved, many farmers and gardeners to help
take care of his property and its plantings.
Opposing Slavery
Slavery was still legal in New York when Rufus
King bought King Manor. He had to choose
whether he wanted to hire farmers and other
servants or if he wanted to buy slaves to work on
his property. He chose to hire people.
Sometimes his servants came from the local area
and other times they moved here from other
places to work for Rufus.
Slavery was a political issue, too – and a very
controversial one.
During Rufus King’s last term in the Senate,
he took a strong stand against slavery. In
1819-1820 he argued in the Senate against
the admission of Missouri as a state that
allowed slavery and fought against the
Missouri Compromise of 1820.
On the floor of the Senate, Rufus spoke out
against slavery, saying:
“I have yet to learn that
one man can make a slave
of another...if one man
cannot do so, no number
of individuals can have any
better right to do it...”
Rufus suggested that states use money from the
sale of public lands for the emancipation of slaves.
John Quincy Adams, who would become our 6th
President, wrote in his diary about the affect of Rufus
King’s powerful anti-slavery speeches:
The slave owners
“...gnawed their lips and
clenched their fists as they
heard him ....the slaveholders cannot hear of him
without being
SEIZED WITH CRAMPS.”
Rufus King probably isn’t the name you
think of first when you think of the end of
slavery. That’s partly because it still took
many years for slavery to end. Rufus
wrote, however, that one speech can
become the foundation of another.
Sometimes change, he knew, required a
lot of people saying that something needs
to change. He was one of the first
statesmen in the world to publicly say that
slavery was wrong.
Beyond Rufus King
Rufus’s eldest son John Alsop King married
Mary Ray and together they had 8 children.
John loved farming, just as his father did,
and when Rufus died in 1827, John and his
family moved into King Manor. His daughter
Cornelia was the last member of the King
family to live in this house.
Like Rufus, John entered politics and he,
too, spoke out strongly against slavery.
John was elected to the U.S. House of
Representatives, the New York State
Assembly and Senate, and served as
Governor of New York State.
Charles King had a very successful career
and was a newspaper editor. Later in his
life, Charles was President of Columbia
College, now Columbia University.
Charles married Eliza Gracie and, when
she died, married Henrietta Liston Low.
Charles had a total of 14 children.
James Gore King was a successful banker,
nicknamed the “Merchant Prince of Wall Street.”
James married Sarah Gracie King (the sister of
Charles’s wife Eliza) and together they had 12
children. From 1848-1850, James represented
New Jersey in the U. S. House of Representatives.
Edward King moved to Ohio when he
was just twenty years old. He married
Sarah Worthington and had five children.
Edward was a lawyer and founder of
Cincinnati Law School.
Frederick King studied science and became
a well-respected doctor. He married Emily
Post, but they had no children. Frederick
died of yellow fever at the age of 27.
King Manor was purchased by the village of
Jamaica in 1897. When Queens became
part of New York City in 1898, the last 11
acres around it became King Park. King
Manor opened as a museum in 1900.
www.kingmanor.org