William R. King

While William Rufus King remained a bachelor all his life, it was rumored that he was a homosexual. These rumors further increased after King developed a close and intimate bond with fellow senator, James Buchanan, of Pennsylvania. From 1834 onwards, both the men shared a Washington boarding house for ten years. The duo often attended social functions together and neither of them got married.

Shortly afterward taking oath for vice presidency on foreign soil, King left Cuba and returned to Chestnut Hill. He died on April 18, 1853, at his estate in Alabama, following a long illness, without carrying out any duties of the office. He was interred in a vault on the plantation and later reinterred in Live Oak Cemetery, Selma, Alabama, US.

In 1852, the Oregon Territorial Legislature named King County—which later became part of the U.S. state of Washington—in his honor

William Rufus DeVane King was born on April 7, 1786, in Sampson County, North Carolina, United States, to William King, and his wife, Margaret deVane. He belonged to a wealthy and well-connected family which owned plantation.

He received his early education from private schools and later attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he became a member of the Philanthropic Society, an important literary student association.

In 1803, he graduated and subsequently became a student of prominent attorney William Duffy, who taught him law and helped him develop political skills. In 1806, King was admitted to the bar and began practice in Clinton, in Samson County.

Shortly after becoming a lawyer, William Rufus King gravitated into politics and in 1807, he was elected to the North Carolina State House of Representatives, where he served until 1809. Thereafter, he became the city solicitor of Wilmington, North Carolina.

Subsequently, he was elected to the Twelfth, Thirteenth and Fourteenth Congresses, a capacity in which he served from March 1811 to November 1816.

After resigning as a Congressman, he was appointed the Secretary of the Legation for William Pinkney and accompanied him to Russia and special diplomatic mission in Naples.

Upon returning to the United States in 1818, William Rufus King moved to Alabama, purchasing property at what would later be known as ‘King's Bend’. He established a large cotton plantation based on slave labor, calling the property ‘Chestnut Hill’. Subsequently, King along with his relatives formed one of the largest slaveholding families in the state.

In 1819, upon the admission of Alabama as the 22nd State, he was elected by the State Legislature as a Democratic-Republican to the United States Senate. Later, King was re-elected at the post again in 1822, 1828, 1834, and 1841, serving from December 1819 to April 1844, until he resigned.