Radio Script #1259

Little Talks on Common Things
January 18, 1981

During the third of a century that this program has been on the air. it has made several references to Maine’s first governor. William King. Most Maine people know that he was the most influential person in securing Maine’s separation from Massachusetts and that he was engaged in shipbuilding and the operation of ocean-going ships from his home city of Bath.

But many Maine people, some of them well versed in Maine history, know little about the wide extent of his business interests or what happened to him after his service as Maine’s governor ended in 1821.

The official history of Bath published in 1976 proclaimed King’s prominence in these words: “The first thirty years of the 19th century in Bath was the age of William King who was then the dominant figure in local affairs. He was not a cultured man in the usual sense, but had good judgment, strong character and indomitable perseverance. He was thirty years old when he came to Bath in 1800. and was then already a man of means, gained by his own efforts. During the subsequent 30 years, his activities embraced many fields: politics and government, trade and commerce, shipbuilding, farming. investments in vast acreage of real estate, religion and military affairs.

William King was born in Scarborough. Maine. on February 9, 1768, the fourth child of Richard King, a prosperous merchant and the owner of several trading vessels. Richard was accused of being a Tory when the Revolution broke out and, of selling a cargo of lumber to the British in Boston. He lost most of his business and the harassment to which he was subjected contributed to his death in 1775 when William was seven years old.

The estate, despite Revolution losses was large enough to keep his widow and six children in reasonable comfort and to see the oldest son Rufus graduate from Harvard in 1777. Rufus became a prominent lawyer, Congressman and U. S. Ambassador, much more known than William, whose fame was limited to New England, especially to Maine. Rufus King was thirteen years older than William .

Because the family considered William destined for a merchant’s life, not in a profession like law or the clergy, a single term at Phillips Andover Academy, was considered education enough beyond the common school – a decision that William later regretted deeply, for all his life – his voluminous correspondence was filled with poor grammar and bad spelling.

The King family became closely connected with another Scarborough family, the Porters. One of William’s sisters, Paula, married Aaron Porter who became a Portland physician. Another sister, Betsy, married Benjamin Porter, also a doctor. Benjamin and Betsy moved to Topsham, where the Dr. developed wide business interests. At the age of 22, William King went to Topsham in 1791 to live with the Porters and work in the town’s largest sawmill, in which Porter had a financial interest. William saved his money, and after only a year in Topsham was able to buy an acre of land for twelve pounds. Shortly thereafter, there was set up the partnership of Porter and King, as merchants and shippers.

After nine years in Topsham, during which the firm of Porter and King accumulated five vessels and considerable land, William decided to move to Bath, where he was to become the leading citizen. He resided there from 1800 until his death in 1852.

The Porter King partnership continued for many years, but King also had other business ventures, either alone or with other partners, so he had gradually accumulated a very large estate. Before 1830, he owned in whole or in part a total of 42 ships, which not only plied along the Atlantic coast of the U.S., but went to many islands of the Caribbean; and some of them sailed regularly to England, France and Holland. There is no evidence that King’s ships ever engaged in the African slave trade.

Shipbuilding became one of King’s major ventures. In her definitive biography of William King, published in 1980, Marion Smith tells us about the Point where King put up his shipyard and built his mansion. She says: “When Bath was being settled, the land where now is City Hall was a bluff, connected with the mainland by a narrow isthmus and almost surrounded by water. In 1792 the place was called Shaw’s Point. King’s shipyard was located where the Maine Central tracks now enter the Carleton Bridge.”

Soon after he arrived in Bath, King married Ann Frazier of Boston. They had two children: Mary Elizabeth, born in 1817, and Cyrus in 1819. Although hit hard by the Embargo Act of 1807, that stopped all legal trade with Britain, King managed to come through without bankruptcy, and after the close of the War of 1812 his fortune accumulated with great speed. One of his ships, carrying two cargoes to Liverpool, more than paid for its cost in a single year, and its later earnings were, except for maintenance, entirely profit. He more than doubled his money in transporting cotton to the mills of England. In 1802 he expanded into insurance of shipping as a partner at Marine Insurance Co. of Boston. He was for five years President of Kennebec Bank of Wiscasset. and was a director of the Hallowell Bank. Then he started and for many years dominated his own bank in Bath.

Gradually extending his holdings in land, he was head of a partnership that bought three townships in the Bingham Purchase, that became known – as the Million Acres, much of it was what became Franklin County. Those townships later became the towns of Concord, Lexington and Kingfield, the last named for William King. On other extensive farms nearer to Bath, King raised potatoes and apples which his ships took to southern ports.

Among his many projects was the first dam on the Carrabasset River. King made a lot of money in lumber. He came to have ownership, in whole or in part, in ten big sawmills. From Bath and other ports, his ships carried to the West Indies lumber that cost him $8 a thousand feet and brought in the island as much as $100 a thousand. Besides building lumber, his ships carried to the West Indies shooks, staves, barrel heads, kegs and tierces, and brought back profitable cargoes of molasses, sugar and rum. King made money both ways, as exporter and importer.

Before he left Topsham King had become interested in politics. He was elected to the Mass. Legislature in 1795. In 1807 he was Lincoln County’s choice for the Massachusetts Senate. By that time he had become disgusted with the failure of the Boston Federalists to give what he deemed adequate attention and support of the District of Maine, and he joined the party of Thomas Jefferson originally called the Democrat-Republican, the predecessor of the modern Democrat party. Under King’s leadership, the Jeffersonians became the dominant party in Maine, a persistent thorn in the flesh of the Mass. Federalists. King became an intimate friend of Jefferson and was several times a guest at Monticello.

At first King supported the Embargo Act imposed by Jefferson and continued by his successor, President Madison. But as he saw the disastrous effect of the embargo on all Maine trade, including his own shipping, King became an ardent advocate for repeal of the Act. During his first year in the Mass. Senate, 1807-08, King succeeded in getting the legislature to make plans for the defense of the Maine coast against raids from British ships, and especially to combat the British impressment of seamen, one of the foremost causes of the War of 1812, which King clearly saw coming long before the outbreak of open hostilities. The Mass. government placed him in command of the militia forces to be recruited in Maine for the District’s defense, and that was when he got the title of Major-General. In fact, even after he served as Governor, King preferred to be called General King.

In the legislature King became a leader of what had already been a strong movement to make Maine a separate state. He was deeply disappointed when on three successive occasions, Maine voters turned down resolutions for separation. The Federalists controlled the Mass. legislature in those years, and King as a Democrat was in the minority. He saw that, not only must he get a strong vote of approval from Maine voters, but must also win over the Mass. legislature and the Congress of the U.S.

It was then that he turned for help to his now famous brother, Rufus, an influential member of the U. S. Congress. Together they gradually built up the forces that secured a Maine vote for separation by 17,000 to 7,000, got it approved by the Mass. legislature, and saw it accepted by Congress as part of the Missouri Compromise of 1820. William King was made President of the Convention that drafted and adopted the constitution of the new State of Maine, and without significant opposition he was elected the state’s first governor.

Even some students of Maine history do not know that King did not serve out his term as governor. In May 1821, he resigned to become a member of the Spanish Claims Commission appointed by President Monroe. That calls for explanation. The Monroe administration received from the Spanish government an offer of all of Florida if the U.S. would pay the $5 million damage claims that individual Americans had against Spain. The Monroe government decided there would have to be a commission to decide on the validity of each such claim. Three of Maine’s representatives to Congress, all close friends and political allies of King, were Mark Hill, John Chandler, and John Holman. They joined in an appeal to King to become one of the commission. They insisted that he was the best possible choice to represent New England merchants in what might be hotly contested claims.

King had led the cause of separation and now had Maine firmly established as a state. He himself was a business man deeply interested in shipping, which played a heavy part in the claims issue. With other shippers, he had suffered losses to the Spanish in the Caribbean trade. Naturally he was eager to help. So he resigned as Governor, handing that office over to the President of the Maine Senate, William D. Williamson, who a dozen years later became the official historian of Maine and whose two volume history is an authoritative account of the state from its earliest colonial days until the early 1830’s.

William King continued to be a Democratic leader until the administration of Andrew Jackson. Jackson’s closing of the Bank of the U.S. had been disastrous for King’s own Bank of Bath. King came to feel that the Jackson administration would be ruinous for all American business. By that time King held the lucrative office of Collector of Customs at Bath,

When President Jackson failed to reappoint him to that office in 1834, King felt it was a final blow, and he joined the newly organized Whig party. In 1835 King was the Whig nominee for Governor of Maine. He had just completed his chairmanship of the committee to build the new state house in Augusta, which cost much more than originally estimated. Led by the Portland Argus, the Maine Democratic papers used that issue against King, and in the fall election he was soundly defeated by the Democrat Robert Dunlap by a vote of 45,000 to 19,000. King never again ran for public office.

I have left for next week a part of this story very little known by people today who know anything at all about William King.
That is the story of the decline of his business ventures and the loss of a large part of his fortune. Until the recent publication of Mrs. Smith’s biography, I, too, was ignorant of a large part of the story. I had never heard that a descendant of a Waterville pioneer was the attorney who settled King’s estate. And I want also to tell you about King’s vital role in the establishment of Colby College. So next week we shall have a concluding broadcast on William King.

Year: 1981