Chattahoochee-Pulaski County GaArchives Biographies.....King, Henry 1796 - 1882
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Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 November 4, 2004, 10:41 am

Author: N. K. Rogers
SOME GEORGIA PIONEERS

By Mrs. Mary W. Miller, (their granddaughter).

    Henry King, son of Joseph and Zilpha Powell King was born in 1796, his wife
in 1795. They were married at the ages of twenty and twenty-one. Their oldest
child, Eliza, was born Feb. 20, 1818. Looking backward through their eyes gives
a perspective of more than a century. Their combined experiences and the
traditions of their lives is a record worthy of preservation.

    The Kings came to Georgia from Tar River in North Carolina, but originally
they were from Raleigh. Henry King's father and the father of William Rufus
King, the Vice President, were brothers and lived in Sampson County, North
Carolina. In later years, William Rufus King, and other members of- this large
family, moved to Alabama. There was a Rufus King in every generation for people
believed in family names in those days.

    Henry King married Elizabeth Lee, a daughter of John Lee and his wife Mary
Brown. She had all the lovable qualities characteristic of the Lees—gentle,
modest, quiet, industrious and affectionate, with intense devotion to her
family; and these qualities prevailed in the families of all her sisters,—Polly
Rogers of Chattahoochee County, Rachel Vaugn, of Alabama, Ellie Scarborough,
Sallie Hargrove, and Harriet Cobb, of South Georgia. There was a brother, John
Lee, who moved to Gary, Georgia.

    Henry King's brothers were Nathan and Joseph King, Charles King of
Chattahoochee County, and Jackie. There was one sister, Belle, who married a
Burns. All these were people of prominence and wealth in their respective counties.

    Henry King was one of the richest men in Chattahoochee County, but he was
not so wealthy as some of his brothers. He lived simply, without apparent pride
in worldly possessions. To him and his wife, there were neither high nor low,
but all human beings were worthy of help and respect if they showed any
disposition to help themselves, by performing honest labor and living upright
lives.

    When a young man, Henry King was a wagoner and carried goods from Augusta,
Ga., to the Cherokee Nation. Of course he used a Conestoga wagon,—a name
familiar to the King descendants before the name of Conestago was dignified and
arrived on the pages of history.

    On one occasion when war between the whites and Indians seemed imminent, he
was in danger from attack by the Indians. But some friendly Indians warned him
of the danger, and gave him the countersign that would enable him to pass in
case of an attack. When he came to the river, a crowd of Indians sprang from
ambush, seized his horses' bridles, jumped upon the loaded wagon, all jabbering
and gesticulating.

    He thought of his talismanie word, which was "Weatherford." When he said
"Weatherford," the crowd of Indians fell back as if by magic. After holding a
consultation, they permitted him to pass unmolested. He never had any more
trouble from the Indians.

    "When a tall and gawky boy of seventeen,"—he told this incident on his last
visit to his daughter, Mrs. Eliza Wilkinson. —"I remember picking huckleberries
in the swamp.- One day as I stood there eating berries, I felt something on my
feet. Looking down, I saw a snake, the largest I thought I had ever seen,
crawling slowly over my bare feet. I stood perfectly still until it passed over
and away; then I left,—but not as slowly as the snake had done, nor in the same
direction."

    What boy now living has a nerve like that?

    When his oldest child married he lived in Pulaski County, Georgia. In the
winter of 1836 he moved to Muscogee County. When he first came here, there were
tall, long-leaf pines with no undergrowth and people could drive or ride through
the woods without having to clear up a road anywhere. Deer were often seen
grazing, or bounding off through the open woods.

    He loved to fish, and even when an old man he would go many miles in pursuit
of his favorite sport. Fresh fish was often on his table, and it was one of his
favorite dishes. Wherever he lived he always had a fish pond on his land, and a
mill, usually both a grist and a saw mill.

    There was nothing effeminate in his character. Pioneers live a hard life,
with plenty of hard work and rough amusements. But through it all he was a
gentleman; and, like all gentlemen of his day, he was a hard drinker. But when
he realized that it was best to quit drinking, he simply quit drinking.

    One day when he went to Columbus to attend to some business, he got drunk,
as usual; only, this time he must have been a little drunker than usual for it
was sundown when he left town for the twenty-mile ride home. He had bought a new
negro that day. He was driving a fine horse, and the negro rode in the buggy
beside his new master. That wild ride must have been terrible to the negro—who
was not drunk.

    It was dark when they came to Upatoie Creek. Many people still remember the
deep gullies that used to be there before good roads were built. They crossed
the covered bridge all right, and then our ancestor, as "drunk as a lord,"
deliberately drove off the high embankment into the deepest gully. The horse was
killed, and it was only a miracle that saved him and the negro alive. Bruised
and broken, they were finally rescued and taken home.

    The next day, that old man with the iron constitution, arose from his bed,
though he must have been stiff and sore, and announced to his wife that he was
going before a magistrate and swear off from drinking.

    "Don't do that," his wife entreated, "I am afraid you will break your oath."

    But she did not know the man whom she married, and with whom' she had lived
for more than a quarter of a century.

    He went, as he said he would do, before a magistrate and took an oath to
stop drinking, and, to his dying day, he was never drunk again. The magistrate
was Mr. Robert Patterson of Halloca District.

    Grand old man! Even in his naughty deeds there was something of the strength
and sublimity of the preceding generations.

    When the War Between the States began he was an old man of 65 years, and
nearly seventy when the war ended, and was already beginning to feel the effects
of age. His oldest sons and all his daughters had married and left home. The war
took his youngest sons, on whom he had begun to rely to attend to business and
left him, an old man, and his wife alone among a crowd of blacks. These slaves
without the guidance of a firm hand, developed some traits that were absent from
the majority of the faithful blacks of the South. They slipped into the house
and stole out bedding, sheets, quilts, and even the clothes of the young sons
who were away in the wvar. They stole the horses out of the lot at night and
drove them to death. The old master, who trusted the slaves, could not imagine
what was the matter with the stock. Afterward he learned that his slaves had
been seen at night in Columbus, and one man told of seeing them in the early
hours of the morning, returning home at a furious rate of speed.

    But they tried one trick too many. One night he waked to percieve his
premises all lighted up-fire!—and found out that some one had built a great fire
of lightwood knots under the back steps of the kitchen, intending to burn him out.

    Then the old lion roused again, and it was a young man who stood there in
the light of his burning dwelling. In a terrible voice he shouted the names of
his slaves, who waked, or pretended to awaken, and came running.

    "Put out that fire you have kindled," he commanded.

    Fast fell the buckets to the bottom of the well; a bucket brigade was
formed, and the fire was soon under control.

    When the last coal was quenched and lay smoking in steam, he called the
slaves around him. In the background cowered a woman.

    "I know who did this," he said, "and if I only had the proof, I would have
thrown you into the fire you built."

    Standing there on his porch in the dying light, he spoke to his slaves who
cowered before him, grand in his just indignation, one man against a hundred
blacks, and told them what would happen if that night's work was ever repeated.

    "If this happens again," he said, "I will shoot every one of you or get the
right one. Now back to your houses."

    The crowd quietly dispersed, and then the tired old giant lay down again on
his bed, without locking a door or closing a window, and went to sleep and slept
all night.

    Grand old man! in his fury and just indignation, standing there alone, his
terrible voice ringing out on the still night air in bitter curses so well
deserved.

    He was six feet tall, sparse built, with dark brown eyes, dark complexion,
(inherited from his mother, who was a Powell) with a large, but a well-formed
nose, a firm chin, a mouth firm, yet pathetic—though that pathetic droop might
have been caused by the infirmities of age. His chief characteristic was his
iron-gray hair, coal black—that rose in two "cow-licks" above his lofty
forehead, and floated back like a plume. After his death, at the age of
eighty-six, as he lay in a massive metallic coffin waiting in the last farewell,
in the old fashioned parlor to be viewed by friends and relatives, that noble
forehead crowned with snowy hair waving back like a plume was the feature least
changed by death.

    His wife was small with delicate features, large blue eyes, and black hair.
Her grand-daughter, Miriam King Cody resembled her. In her old age she became so
stout that it was said that she was "almost as broad as she was long."

    In their old age they were familiarly called "Aunt Betsy" and "Uncle Henry"
by hundreds—the rich who respected them, the poor whom they had befriended, and
who loved them.


Additional Comments:
From:

HISTORY OF CHATTAHOOCHEE COUNTY, GEORGIA
By N. K. Rogers

Dedicated to

KASIHITA CHAPTER U. D. C.

and all worthy descendants of the County's first settlers.

Copyright 1933

by N. K. ROGERS

PRINTED   BY
COLUMBUS  OFFICE  SUPPLY CO. COLUMBUS, GA.




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