The editors at the Journal of the American Revolution have posted the second and concluding article I wrote about Rufus King. This article brings King from 1789 to 1805, the year he purchased the house we see above. It worked out well because the scope of the JAR ends in 1805. Anything beyond that isn’t so much part of the Revolutionary or Early American periods. In 1805 King had another third of his life to go, but that’s a story for another time and venue. Work has been progressing on the manuscript about the King family in which I am in the early stages of writing. When the pandemic ends, I intend to visit archives in Massachusetts, Milwaukee, and elsewhere to track down the lives and times of his children, grandchildren, and beyond. Thankfully, there is also a large amount of material related to various Kings here in New York as well.

I love this image that we see above of King Manor. It comes from the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) report. It never quite occurred to me until I wrote the article linked to above that Rufus and wife Mary purchased this hime in 1805 inspired not just by Rufus’s childhood experience in Scarborough, Massachusetts (today Maine), but by the grand manors they would have seen in England when Mr. King was the U.S. ambassador to the Court of St. James’s.

(image/Library of Congress)