Category Archives: Rufus King

Yorktown, 1781-1881

19 Monday Oct 2020

Posted by in King family book manuscript, Rufus King

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This past Thursday in the early evening I attended a virtual writing event at which we the participants wrote in bursts of twenty minute increments with a brief break in between to check in on how we did. For me it was a chance to get back to my manuscript about the Rufus King family, which I had to put aside in mid-August to prepare for the academic year. I mention it because the book begins with a brief telling of the October 1881 centennial observation of the Siege of Yorktown. Cornwallis surrendered to Washington on October 19, 1781. In what seems a lifetime ago I wrote a little bit about this five years ago in August 2015, though from a different angle from which I will be focusing in the King book.

The reason I mentioned all this here is because John Alsop King, Jr., Rufus King’s grandson, was one of the leaders of the New York delegation. He was hardly unique: the grandsons of many of the leading figures of the Revolutionary War Era participated in the Yorktown observation, which proved hugely important in late nineteenth century diplomacy.

(image/Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center of the Boston Public Library)

Rufus King, part two

18 Saturday Jul 2020

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King Manor, Jamaica Queens circa mid-twentieth century

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)

 

Highwood

20 Saturday Jun 2020

Posted by in James Gore King )1791-1853), John Alsop King (1788-1867), Rufus King, The Kings in America: One Family in the Forging of a Nation (book manuscript project)

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Villa on the Hudson, Near Weehawken, illustration for Nathaniel Parker Willis’s book American Scenery

I spent the morning tweaking the outline and adding to the King family tree for my book project about the Rufus King family. Keeping the names and dates straight is key because I am covering from the early 1700s through the 1930s and death of Charles King. This morning I came up with a working title for the manuscript: “The Kings in America: One Family in the Forging of a Nation.” In my research today I also came across this 1838 hand-doored engraving and thought I would share. Here we see hikers enjoying the scenery along the Hudson River near Weehawken, New Jersey. It is striking how rural the scene is. This is also the spot where Vice President Aaron Burr mortally wounded Alexander Hamilton in their 1804 duel. The building atop the bluff is Highwood, the home built in the early 1830s by James Gore King, a son of Rufus King. It is poignant that James King built his house on this particular spot; his father Rufus was a good friend of Hamilton’s, and James would have known that this was where the duel took place.

James Gore King entertained Charles Dickens, Washington Irving, Daniel Webster, and others here at his Highwood estate in the decades prior to the Civil War. King was a banker and railroad magnate, among other things. A Whig, he served in the 31st Congress with his older brother John Alsop King from 1849–1851 and thus took part in the debates that evolved into the Compromise of 1850.

(image/Yale University Art Gallery)

 

The “American Kipling”

13 Saturday Jun 2020

Posted by in Charles King (soldier & writer), King family book manuscript, Rufus King

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I spent a good portion of the day finding, reading, and saving various articles related to the King family as I gear up to begin writing my book manuscript in greater earnest over the summer. I am staying as organized as I can because my narrative will go from the early 1700s through the 1930s and cross several generations as they navigate their lives and times. I spent a good chunk of today on Charles King, who is credited with seventy years of military service starting in the 1860s through his involvement training troops that soon went off to France to fight in the Great War. He lived until March 15, 1933, dying after a fall two weeks into the Franklin Roosevelt administration. Charles was the great-grandson of Rufus King.

One of the key aspects to Charles King’s life, in addition to his long military service, was his other career as a writer. His work is little read today, but Charles King was the best-selling author of over five dozen books and 150 some odd magazine articles, working in short and long form fiction, non-fiction, and autobiography. Many called him the “American Kipling” because his life and work overlapped so neatly with that Englishman’s. They also covered many of the same topics and themes, King from and American perspective and Kipling from a British one as they bought their small war in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. I do not yet know if the reason for Charles King’s current anonymity is due more to the possible outdatedness of his prose or the possible outdatedness of his ideas. Put another way: King’s triumphalist interpretation of how the west was won is looked upon unfavorably today. Here we see one of his stories as published in Lippincotts in 1888. This magazine work was hugely important to writers of all styles and genres in King’s time.

(image/J.B. Lippincott & Co, Philadelphia, PA, 1888)

Sunday morning coffee

17 Sunday May 2020

Posted by in Incorporating New York (book manuscript project), John Jay, Rufus King

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I have been trying this weekend to make some headway on a project that hopefully will come to fruition sometime this summer. Though there is still much to do, the writing is coming along. My goal is to finish the draft before Memorial Day. We’ll see if that comes to pass. One of the figures in the project is John Jay, who died on May 17, 1829. Jay was a governor, acting Secretary of State, and Supreme Court Chief Justice among other things. His grandson is a figure in Incorporating New York, my as-yet unpublished manuscript about Civil War Era New York City. It is often lost on us how little time passed between the Revolutionary and Civil War generations. I had hope to visit the Jay Heritage Center in Rye this summer but that is looking less likely given the current pandemic situation. This coming September there is a conference related to Jay at Columbia University to commemorate the completion of the seven-volume Jay Papers project. Hopefully that will still come to pass, if only in an online virtual context.

(image/NYPL)

Fending Chaos: the Early Years of Rufus King

30 Thursday Apr 2020

Posted by in Federal Hall National Memorial, Founding Fathers, Incorporating New York (book manuscript project), Rufus King

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Rufus King Manor library & study, Jamaica Queens

The Journal of the American Revolution has posted my article about Rufus King. Of all the things I have written (so far), this may be the most rewarding. King is such an important figure and his story is so important to tell. This article ends in 1789, the year of the First Congress and Washington’s inaugural at Federal Hall. I am working on a part two right now that will bring King up through 1805, the year after his unsuccessful presidential bid and purchase of his Jamaica Queens home. The article is still very much in the early stages, but if all goes as planned it will get released sometime in early summer.

Now seems an opportune time to say publicly that I’ve decided my next book project will be about the King family in America. I had the Ah-ha moment this past Saturday and spent a good portion of this past weekend preparing some timelines. I intend to cover six generations from the early 1700s to the 1930s. Rufus King’s son, John Alsop King, plays a role in my yet-to-be-published manuscript “Incorporating New York” about Civil War Era New York City, so the topic is less of a digression than it might seem at first glance. In many ways, Rufus King’s sons and grandsons, and the generations of which they were a part, had to deal with the issues that the founders had put off, slavery, expansion, and other contentious things in particular. Rufus King himself returned to the Senate in the 1810s and dealt with such hot-button issues as the War of 1812 and Missouri Compromise. It is a story worth telling.

(image/CaptJayRuffins via Wikimedia Commons)

Rufus King weds Mary Alsop

30 Monday Mar 2020

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The beautiful Mary Alsop married Rufus King on March 30, 1786.

Over the weekend I continued on a project that ideally will become public sometime later this spring. I’d rather save the content for the project itself but could not resist sharing right now that two of the main figures in my story were married on this date in Manhattan in 1786. Rufus King represented Massachusetts in the Congress of the Confederation when he met Mary Alsop, the beautiful daughter of wealthy New York City merchant John Alsop. The following year King represented Massachusetts in the 1787 Constitutional Convention and helped draft that document. By the following summer the necessary number of states had ratified the Consecution, after which he and Mary moved to New York permanently. King was soon elected to the U.S. Senate and served in the First Congress. More . . . hopefully, to come.

(image/NYPL)

Rufus King, 1755-1827

24 Tuesday Mar 2020

Posted by in Rufus King, Those we remember

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Rufus King as portrayed by Gilbert Stuart circa 1820

Founding Father Rufus King was born on this date 265 years ago today, March 24, 1755. I do not want to write too much about King right now because I am currently working on a project relating to this forgotten early American, a drafter of the Constitution, and want to save my thoughts for that undertaking. In the meantime check out this piece I wrote last summer about visiting King Manor in Queens. I had intended to write about King more this past winter but got caught up in other things. I’ll say one about the self-isolating thing: it helps one be productive and get some work done. I was texting yesterday with a friend of mine, an intelligent person who works at a New York cultural institution currently closed due to the health crisis, saying I felt I must spend this time as fruitfully as possible amidst so much turmoil and loss. He said he understood and was doing the same.

Hopefully by summer everything will be back to normal, or at least a semblance of what passes for normal in our current historical moment. Among other things I want to return to Queens to see the King family’s final resting place around the corner from King Manor. The church grounds where they lay is only open certain hours in the morning, which I did not know at the time of my first visit. I saw the graveyard itself but had no way from the sidewalk on the other side of the gate where specifically he and his family within the grounds. People walk past every day without knowing that in their midst lies this Constitutional framer, three-term U.S. senator from New York, vice-presidential and presidential candidate.

(image/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution)

Constitution Day

17 Tuesday Sep 2019

Posted by in Alexander Hamilton, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, James Madison, Rufus King

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Audience at FDR’s Constitution Day speech, September 17, 1937

Today, September 17, is Constitution Day. It was on this date in 1787 that the Framers met for the final time to sign the document they had written over that contentious summer. It was never a sure thing and was still not a done deal; after that the Constitution went to the states for ratification, a process that took several years as state delegates argued for and against. It was in this period that Hamilton, Jay, and Madison authored The Federalist.

Constitution Day is one of those holidays, like Flag Day and Evacuation Day, that used to be a significant part of American culture but that are hardly remembered today. We would do wise to keep in mind what we stand to lose; if we have learned anything over the past few years it is that our world is more fragile than we would like to think. Many thousands used to turn out in places like Brooklyn’s Prospect Park and Borough Hall for speeches and parades. There is still some of that. The Rufus King Manor in Queens, for instance, is having its annual observation and fundraiser today. King himself was one of the drafters of the Constitution and was there in Philadelphia for most of the convention. Other events are undoubtedly taking place elsewhere.

President Roosevelt gave his 1937 Constitution Day speech during his Supreme Court packing initiative, largely seen today as one of the major blunders of his administration.

Here are two images from the 1937 Constitution.Day. President Roosevelt spoke that evening at the base of the Washington Monument. One can see the seriousness on his face. That is because this event came during his notorious Courting Packing controversy and he was trying to rally support. The thing never went his way and it is justifiably seen as a low mark in his twelve year presidency.

(images/Library of Congress)