Multnomah County OR Archives Biographies.....King, Fred C. December 30, 1872 - 
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Source: History of the Columbia River Valley From The Dalles to the Sea, Vol. III, Published 1928, Pages 774 - 777
Author: The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company

     FRED C. KING, secretary-treasurer of the firm of King Brothers, a 
corporation, is one of the owners of an extensive tank, pipe, stack plant 
which is numbered among the chief industries of Portland. Its products include 
boilers, tanks, pipe, stacks, repair work, together with electric and 
acetylene welding and cutting. Mr. King was born in Portland, Michigan, 
December 30, 1872, a son of Richard D. and Mary Ann King, who with their 
family of nine children came to Portland in 1888. The father passed away the 
following year but the mother long survived, her death occurring in 1918.

     Fred C. King was a youth of sixteen years when he accompanied his parents 
to the northwest. He had previously pursued his education in the country 
schools of Brookville, Kansas, and at the age of seventeen he obtained a 
position with the Inman Poulsen Lumber Company, of Portland, with which he 
continued for three years. He afterward secured employment in the Southern 
Pacific Railroad shops, where he learned the boiler-making trade, spending 
eleven years in that connection. Because of impaired health he then took over 
the active management of the King House on Jefferson street, of which he was 
the owner for thirteen years and at the same time, as a side line, he carried 
on a real estate business. In 1917 he built the Merlin apartments at Broadway 
and Grant streets, which he still owns and he is also one of the officers in 
the State Laundry Company. The firm of King Brothers was organized in May, 
1910, as a thousand dollar concern, by Fred C. King and his two brothers: 
Arthur R., who is now the president of the company; and Edward R., who is the 
manager. They began operations under the name of the King Brothers Boiler 
Works, and the present style of King Brothers was adopted in 1927. The 
enterprise was first housed in a building forty by sixty feet at East 
Eighteenth and Lafayette streets, where they did all kinds of repair work in 
their line. Seven times they have added to the original plant and now occupy 
the entire block from East Seventeenth to East Eighteenth streets and from 
Lafayette to McLoughlin streets, also seven other lots in adjoining property. 
In addition they have pipe dipping vats and a new manufacturing plant, fifty 
by two hundred feet, on other property. Fred C. King was not active in the 
business until 1922, except in an advisory capacity, but in that year largely 
took over the control of the enterprise and now gives his entire attention to 
the business. The capital of the firm was increased first to five thousand 
dollars, later to twenty-five thousand and is now one hundred thousand 
dollars, and plans are being made to further increase the capital stock. They 
manufacture low pressure heating boilers and high pressure upright and 
horizontal boilers of all kinds and they carry a stock of second-hand boilers, 
also doing all kinds of repair work. They manufacture pressure tanks, hot 
water, hydro pneumatic and steam receivers, also air receivers, storage tanks 
and oil tanks, their output including large tanks for oil, water and other 
liquids. They likewise manufacture tower tanks of all shapes, stand pipes and 
reservoirs and miscellaneous tanks of all descriptions, smokestacks and 
breechings, miscellaneous plate work, conveyor chutes and troughs, furnaces, 
dryers, circular and flat perforated screens of all kinds. Moreover, they make 
electrically welded and riveted pipe, penstocks, dredge pipe, etc., and in the 
field of structural work manufacture steel towers, small roof trusses and 
steel frame work of all kinds. Their paper mill work includes digesters, 
diffusers, causticizing tanks, cyclone liquor storage tanks, condensers, chip 
tanks and heater tanks. In February, 1928, the firm began the manufacture of 
steel interment vaults made of special Keystone copper steel, welded and 
finely finished, and they are the only people west of the Rocky mountains 
engaged in manufacture of this character. They also do commercial dipping of 
pipe for most of the local firms and jobbers. Their plant is all on the ground 
floor and they have one of the best equipped shops of this kind in the 
northwest. Their patronage comes from Washington, Idaho, Oregon, California, 
Montana and Wyoming and they employ on an average of from fifty to one hundred 
people, doing an extensive business for paper mills, public service 
corporations, sawmills and other large concerns. They do much designing and 
development work and now employ four skilled engineers. The business has been 
wisely and systematically developed along lines meeting modern-day conditions 
and their enterprise has found expression in substantial success.

     Mr. King was married in 1918 to Cecelia T. Shuttleworth, who was born in 
Aberdeen, South Dakota, and they have one child, Jean Marietta.

     Fraternally Mr. King is both a York and Scottish Rite Mason, a member of 
Multnomah Camp, No. 77, of the Woodmen of the World, Oregon Lodge, No. 1, of 
the United Artisans, and Kirkpatrick Council, No. 2227, Security Benefit 
Association. His interest in community welfare and civic betterment is 
evidenced in his connection with the East Side Commercial Club and the 
Portland Chamber of Commerce. His has been an active and useful life. As the 
eldest child of his parents heavy responsibilities were his in his youth, 
owing to his father's death, for it became necessary that he aid in supporting 
the family. He early learned how valuable and effective are industry, 
perseverance, economy and determination, and all these qualities he 
successfully cultivated, utilizing them in the management and upbuilding of 
his business affairs, which have become an important element not only in the 
promotion of his own fortunes but in the advancement of industrial activity in 
this city.

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