USA > New York > Queens County > History of Queens County, New York : with illustrations, portraits, and sketches of prominent families and individuals. > Part 53
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While occupied with his duties as a member of Con- gress he was designated by his State as one of the com- missioners to determine the boundary between New York and Massachusetts, and was empowered with his colleague to convey to the United States the large tract of land beyond the Alleghanies belonging to his State.
On August 14th 1786 Rufus King and James Monroe were appointed a committee on behalf of Congress to wait upon the Legislature of Pennsylvania and explain the financial embarassments of the United States, and to urge the prompt repeal by that State of the embarrassing condition upon which it had voted its contingent of the 5 per cent. impost levied on Congress on all the States. The speech of Mr. King on this occasion, though no notes of it remain, is commemorated as most effective and brilliant.
On May 26th 1787 he took his seat in the Federal con- vention. The journals of the convention and the frag- ments of its debates which have come down to us attest the active participation of Mr. King in the important business transacted; and, although one of the youngest members of that body, he was selected as one of the com- mittee of five to "revise the style of and arrange the articles " agreed on for the new constitution. Having signed the constitution as finally adopted, Mr. King went back to Massachusetts, and was immediately chosen a delegate to the State convention which was to pass upon its acceptance or rejection. Fierce opposition was made in that convention to this instrument, Mr. King successfully leading the array in defense.
In 1788 he took up his permanent residence in New York, where in 1786 he had married Mary, daughter of John Alsop; and in the following year he was elected a representative of that city in the Assembly of the State.
In the summer of the same year he was chosen by the Legislature the first senator from the State of New York under the new constitution, having for his colleague Gen- eral Schuyler.
In this body he took rank among the leaders of the Federal party. In the bitter conflict aroused by Jay's treaty he was conspicuous in its defense, both in the Senate and as the joint author with Alexander Hamilton of a series of newspaper essays, under the signature of " CAMILLUS."
In 1795 Mr. King was re-elected to the Senate, and while serving his second term was nominated by Washı- ington minister plenipotentiary to Great Britain, having previously declined the office of secretary of state, made vacant by the resignation of Edmund Randolph. He embarked with his family at New York in July 1796, and for eight years ably fulfilled the duties of the office. No foreign minister was more sagacious in ascertaining or divining the views and policy of nations, or more careful in keeping his own government well informed on all the public questions of the day. His diplomatic corre- spondence is a model both in style and in topics. The Federal party having lost its ascendancy in the public councils Mr. King, shortly after Mr. Jefferson's acces- sion, asked to be recalled. He was, however, urged by the president to remain, as he had in hand important negotiations. The recurrence of war in Europe conse- quent upon the rupture of the peace of Amiens leaving little hope of success on the point to which his efforts had been chiefly directed, that of securing our seamen
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against impressment, he renewed his request to be re-
been paid off, then and thenceforth the whole of the lieved; and accordingly a successor was appointed, and public land of the United States, with the net proceeds Mr. King returned to his country in 1804, and withdrew to a farm at Jamaica, L. I. of all future sales thereof, shall constitute and form a fund which is hereby appropriated, and the faith of the United States is pledged that the said fund shall be in- violably applied, to aid the emancipation of such slaves within any of the United States, and to aid the removal of such slaves and the removal of such free persons of color in any of the said States, as by the laws of the States respectively may be allowed to be emancipated or removed to any territory or country without the limits of the United States of America."
In 1813, during the war with Great Britain, he took his seat for the third time as United States senator. Yielding no blind support to the administration, and of- fering to it no partisan opposition, he yet was ever ready to strengthen its hands against the common enemy. When the capitol at Washington was burned by the Brit- ish forces he resisted the proposal to remove the seat of government to the interior, and rallied the nation to de. fend the country and avenge the outrage. His speech on this occasion in the Senate was one of those that marked him as a great orator.
At the close of the war he applied himself to maturing the policy which should efface its evils as speedily as possible, and build up permanent prosperity. To a bill, however, for a United States bank with a capital of $50,000,000 he made earnest opposition. He resisted the claim of Great Britain to exclude us from the com- merce of the West India Islands; and to his intelligent opposition of the laws of navigation and defense of the mercantile interests and rights of the United States we are indebted for the law of 1818.
He likewise early discerned the danger of the sales of the public lands on credit, and by his bill substituting payment and a fixed but reduced price for these lands, stipulating a remission of interest and of a portion of the principal of the debt then due therefor, he averted a great political peril and gave order and security to the receipts from the sale of those lands.
In 1819 he was re-elected to the Senate, as in the pre- vious instance by a Legislature of adverse politics to his own. In 1816 he had been, without his knowledge, named as the candidate of the Federal party for gover- nor of New York. He reluctantly accepted the nomi- nation, but was not elected.
Shortly afterward the so-called Missouri question be- gan to agitate the nation. Mr. King was pledged against the extension of slavery; and when Missouri presented herself for admission as a State with a constitution au- thorizing the holding of slaves he was inexorably op- posed to it. The State of New York, by an almost unanimous vote of its Legislature, instructed him to re- sist the admission of Missouri as a slave State; and the argument made by Mr. King in the Senate, though but partially reported, has been the repertory for almost all subsequent arguments against the extension of slavery. He also opposed the compromise introduced by Mr. Clay, which partially yielded the principle, and voted to the last against it. His fourth term in the Senate ex- pired in March 1825, when he took leave of that body, and, as he hoped, of public life, in which for 40 years he had been engaged. One of his latest acts was to pre- sent the following resolution, February 16th 1825:
" That as soon as the portion of the existing funded debt of the United States for the payment of which the public land of the United States is pledged shall have
The resolution was read, and on motion of Mr. Benton of Missouri ordered to be printed.
John (). Adams, now become president, urged Mr. King to accept the embassy to England, with which country unadjusted questions of moment were pending, which the president believed Mr. King was specially qualified to manage. He reluctantly accepted the mis- sion, but his health gave way, and after a few months spent in England, where he was warmly welcomed, he resigned and came home.
His son John Alsop, born in New York, January 3d 1788, was seven times elected to the State Legislature, was a member of Congress in 1849-51, and governor of the State in 1857-59. He was for many years president of the State agricultural society, and died in Jamaica, L. I., July 8th 1867. His second son, Charles, born in March 1789, was for some tinie a merchant, member of the Legislature in 1813, from 1823 to 1845 editor of the New York American, afterward associate editor of the Courier and Enquirer, and from 1849 to 1864 president of Columbia College. He died in Frascati, Italy, Sep- tember 27th 1867. He was the author of a " Memoir of the Croton Aqueduct " (1843), "History of the New York Chamber of Commerce," "New York Fifty Years Ago " and other historical pamphlets.
GOVERNOR JOHN A. KING.
John Alsop King, the eldest son of Rufus King and Mary, the only child of John Alsop, was born in New York, on the 3d of January 1788. During his father's residence in England as ambassador from the United States, from 1797 to 1803, he was placed with his younger brother Charles at Harrow, where they obtained the fine classical and manly education which characterized their after life. In 1803 they were sent to Paris for a year to study mathematics and the French language. Returning to New York John entered the office of Edmund Pen- dleton for the study of law, and when admitted to the bar began his practice in the court of chancery. In Jan- uary 1810 he was married to Mary, the only daughter of Cornelius Ray, a gentleman of wealth and culture in New York.
When the war of 1812 with Great Britain broke out Mr. King applied for and secured from Governor Tomp- kins a commission as lieutenant of hussars, to be sta- tioned at New York, thus practically carrying out, as did his brothers Charles and James, the principle upon which their father had acted-that, though in judgment
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GOVERNOR JOHN A. KING.
opposed to the war, as citizens they had but one duty, to sustain the country. Upon the return of peace he re- signed his commission, and soon after removed to a farm which he had bought at Jamaica, L. I., near to his father's. In the cultivation of this and in advancing the agricultural and various interests of the county the his vote for General Harrison. At this time and always next ten years were passed, as he often said, the happiest years of his life. His means were moderate, but by his habits of close application and personal industry, rising early and working late, plowing, sowing, reaping, assisting in putting up fences and out-buildings, he was enabled to live in comfort. When the work was over, as there was an abundance of game on the island, he enjoyed the use of his fishing rod, his gun, and his sporting dogs, and rode in the fox hunt on a famous mare. A lover of fine cattle, and especially of fine horses, he constantly attended the races on the Union course, within a few miles of his home and at that time the field upon which the speediest and best-blooded horses from north and south contended for victory, and he was for many years the president of the Jockey Club.
The affairs of the State were always matters of deep interest to him, and so well pleased were the people with his stirring addresses that he was by them sent to the Assembly in 1819, 1820 and 1821. These were years in which political feelings were · much excited, and Mr. King took an active and prominent part, arraying him- self, with many of his Federal friends, upon the disrup- tion of the Federal party, in opposition to the ambitious schemes of Mr. Clinton. Though opposed to him polit- ically Mr. King was with him an early and ardent ad- vocate of the Erie Canal, and continued to be so to the latest hour of his life.
After the adoption of the new constitution he was elected to the Senate and took his seat in 1824, drawing the shortest term. His onward career in State politics was at this time checked by his appointment as secretary of legation to Great Britain, in order that he might ac- company his father, who had been charged by Mr. Adams with a special mission to the court of St. James; and when, in consequence of impaired health, his father was obliged after a brief sojourn to return home, Mr. King remained behind as charge d'affaires until the arrival of the new ambassador. It was a pleasant service to him, for he was thus brought into official and friendly relations with many of his old comrades at Harrow, now the leading men of Great Britain.
In 1827, after his father's death, he bought from his brother the fine old mansion at Jamaica, where he con- tinued to reside until his death. During his absence abroad great political changes had taken place, many of his old friends having became adherents of General Jackson, and he was defeated as a candidate for Con- gress, for which he had been nominated by the friends of Mr. Adams. In 1832 the people of Queens county, de- siring to secure several privileges, among others a rail- way between Jamaica and Brooklyn, sent Mr. King to the Assembly; a charter for one was obtained, he was made president of the road, and was active in locating and finishing it. Nor did his interest in such improve- ments stop here, for he assisted in developing the rail- way system on the island, as well as in the making of
turnpike and plank roads to benefit the farmers in trans- porting their crops to market. In 1838 and 1840 he was again sent to the Legislature. In 1839 he was a dele- gate to the national convention, where, though earnestly pressing Mr. Clay, he felt it to be his duty finally to cast
he firmly maintained the distinctive views of the Whig party, and especially on the subject of slavery. Elected to Congress in 1848, he was enabled to act upon these opinions and to assist in moulding the public action during the two sessions of the 3ist Congress, from 1849 to 1851. Both in private and in public debate he strenuously resisted the passage of the compromise measures and of the fugitive slave bill, one of the meas- ures which exposed the purposes of advocates of the ex- tension of slavery and exasperated the manly sentiment of the north against their demands. He also took an active part in discussing the measures which resulted in making California a free State-the first decided evidence of the determination of the people to restrain slavery within its then limits; a result which his father had so ably but so unsuccessfully contended for on the admis- sion of Missouri.
In 1852 he was a delegate to the national convention which nominated General Scott, and in 1856 he was sent to the Philadelphia convention, where his earnest and active efforts, resulting in the nomination of Fremont, so commended him to the other members that he was prominently named as the candidate for vice-president, but he yielded to the plea of New Jersey in favor of Mr. Dayton.
In the previous year he had been chairman of the Whig convention of New York, at Syracuse, which fused with the Republican convention and thus blended the Whigs with the independent Democrats and formed the Republican party. By this party he was in 1856 nomi- nated for governor of New York, and was elected by a very large majority. He took the oath of office on the Ist of January 1857, and, as has been said, "discharged the duties with rare firmness and sagacity." In his first message he advocated the cause of popular education and that of internal improvement. He assumed that the people of New York, by his election, declared as "their deliberate and irreversible decree that so far as the State of New York is concerned there shall be henceforth no extension of slavery in the territories of the United States." " This conclusion I most unreservedly adopt, and am prepared to abide by it at all times, under all circumstances, and in every emergency."
In 1860 Mr. King was at the Chicago convention, and with the New York delegation earnestly sought the nom- ination of Mr. Seward; but the convention cast its vote for Mr. Lincoln. Mr. King was afterward chosen one of the electors at large.
Once again he was tempted from his retirement at Ja- maica, by the vain hope that some means might be dis- covered to stop the effusion of blood and the desolation which threatened the country, and accepted from Gov- ernor Morgan the appointment of delegate to the peace conference which assembled in Washington February 4th 1861 at the invitation of Virginia. The effort was un- successful, but Mr. King lived long enough to see slavery,
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the cause of so many troubles and of the civil war, en- tirely abolished, and the country again united, with the national flag floating in peace over every State in the Union. While addressing the young men at Jamaica on the 4th of July 1867, and commending that flag to their care, telling them in warm and heartfelt words that their aim should ever be the service of their country and their God, he was seized with sudden faintness, and, sinking paralyzed into the arms of his friends, he was carried to his home, where, on the 7th, he died peacefully, sur- rounded by his family.
Mr. King gave much of his time and thought to agri- culture, both as a practical and a scientific pursuit, labor- ing earnestly in the Queens County Agricultural Society, of which he was one of the founders and often president. He was one of the founders and afterward president of the New York State Agricultural Society, from whose meetings he was rarely absent; one of the founders and a vice-president of the United States Agricultural So- ciety, and a promoter of the agricultural college at Ovid, which was afterward transferred to Cornell University. He was deeply interested in the prosperity of Jamaica, and especially in the educational and religious institu- tions, in advancing which he spent much time and thought, as well as money.
An earnest and faithful member of the Protestant Episcopal church, in which he was brought up, he was for many years a vestryman and warden of Grace church, Jamaica, to whose welfare he was warmly devoted and under the shadow of whose walls he now rests in peace. Nor was his love for the church confined within the nar- row limits of his parish, for he was long an able and trusted councillor in the affairs of the diocese of his na- tive State and of the General Theological Seminary. He was an honorary member of the New York Chamber of Commerce, a member of the New York and Long Island Historical Societies, and of the St. Nicholas Society, of which he was one of the founders.
Inheriting a manly and vigorous constitution, quick and active in his movements, and having lived a temper- ate and well regulated life, he retained his physical and intellectual qualities almost unimpaired until the end of his long life. The resolutions adopted by the Union Club of New York, of which he had long been president, briefly but truly sum up his character:
"Resolved, That, individually, we have lost the compan- ionship of a cultivated gentleman, a man of spotless in- tegrity and a kind and genial friend.
" Resolved, That our State has lost a distinguished cit- izen, the purity of whose motives and the sincerity of whose patriotism have never in the bitterest contest of party been questioned, and whose long-life example of unvarying integrity and of uniform public and private virtue is a rich and endearing legacy to his countrymen."
Mrs. King continued to reside in the house at Jamaica where she had lived so happily for nearly half a century, and there affer a brief illness she passed away in August 1873-a Christian lady, beloved of all, full of gentleness, sound judgment and good works. A large family sur- vived her. The eldest daughter, Mary, married P. M. Nightingale, of Georgia, a grandson of General Nathan- iel Greene.
Charles Ray, an alumnus of Union Hall Academy, of Columbia College and of the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania, studied medicine in Phila- delphia and Paris. He married Hannah Wharton, and after her decease Nancy Wharton, daughters of William W. Fisher of Philadelphia. After practicing medicine in New York and Philadelphia he bought a farni upon the Pennsylvania bank of the Delaware, in Bucks county, where he now resides. Though an earnest Republican
he has never sought political life, but has occupied him- self in striving to advance the interests of agriculture and the education of the people. A lifelong member of the Protestant Episcopal Church, as vestryman and warden since 1851 in his own parish, as deputy to the convention of the diocese of Pennsylvania for thirty years, and as an overseer in the divinity school in Phila- delphia from its foundation, he has given his time and efforts to promote the welfare of the church of his affection.
Elizabeth Ray married Colonel Henry Van Rensselaer. who was a son of the elder Stephen Van Rensselaer and died in the service of his country during the late war of the rebellion. Caroline married her cousin James Gore King, son of James G. King. Richard married Eliza- beth, daughter of Mordecai Lewis of Philadelphia, and has always been honorably engaged in commercial and banking business, being now president of the National Bank of Commerce in New York and a vestryman of Grace Church, Jamaica. Cornelia, the youngest child, unmarried, lives at the homestead at Jamaica; given to hospitality and zealous in good works and for the wel- iare of the parish.
JOHN ALSOP KING.
John Alsop, second son of John Alsop and Mary King, was born July 14th 1817, at Jamaica, where he went to school, graduating at Harvard University in 1835. He entered a counting-house, and then went into business, but soon left, to study law. He was married, in 1839, to Mary Colden, only daughter of Philip Rhine- lander. He lived in the city until 1854, when he pur- chased part of Hewlett's Point, at Great Neck, North Hempstead, where, with the exception of several visits abroad, he has since resided, carrying on, personally and assiduously, the various labors of the farn?, actively con- nected with the agricultural societies of Queens county, the State, and the United States. He is an interested member of many of the societies devoted to the educa- tional, material, historical and charitable affairs of the county and of the State; warden of the church, delegate to the diocesan conventions, twice deputy to the General Convention, one of the executive committee of the General Theological Seminary and a manager of the board of missions.
In politics he was a Whig, and then a Republican; he has often been sent to the State conventions, and in 1872 was a delegate to the national convention which renomi- nated General Grant, and a member of the college of electors. Chosen to the State Senate in 1873. he was a zealous supporter and defender of the Erie Canal, and of the constitutional amendments, which brought about many reforms in the State government. With the aid of the members from the first district he succeeded in having the infamous act of 1868 repealed, by which, un- known to the owners, the salt meadow water fronts of Staten and Long Islands had been sold for a trifling sum to a land company. He received a vote of thanks from the Chamber of Commerce in relation to the act estab- lishing the court of arbitration. He was defeated for Congress in 1876, and again in 1880. He was appoint- ed by Governor Cornell, in 1881, the commissioner for the State of New York at the Yorktown Centennial; and was made chairman of a commission of fifteen citizens, named by the governor, under a resolution of the Senate jof the State, to receive and extend the courtesies and hospitalities of the State to the delegation from France, and the other foreign guests invited by the United States to take part at Yorktown in the centennial celebration. Both duties were faithfully discharged.
LONG ISLAND CITY.
ONG ISLAND CITY, the seat of justice of Queens county, comprises the localities long known as Astoria, Hunter's Point, Ravens- wood, Dutch Kills, Blissville and Middle- town. The more populous of these places are still geographically distinct, the spaces inter- vening between them not having been built up as yet, and the new city name is by many ignored in conse- quence. The city is located on Long Island, opposite the upper part of New York. It is bounded southeast by Newtown, of which it was originally a part. On the south it is separated from Brooklyn by Newtown Creek. The East River forms its western and northern boundary, and Blackwell's, Ward's and Randall's Islands lie oppo- site this city. North Brother, South Brother and Berrien's Islands are included within the city limits.
Astoria, in the northern part of the city, extends along the shore of the East River. It was long known as Hallett's Cove, and was afterward named in honor of John Jacob Astor. The place contains many charming suburban dwellings, some of which are old and almost all of which are very well located. The boulevard is a drive which extends through the village parallel with the shore, and which is skirted on the water side with residences having water front and between which delightful views of the river and the islands in it may be obtained. There · are several manufacturing enterprises located here.
Hunter's Point is a great oil-refining depot and the lo- cality of many manufacturing interests. The refineries extend more than a mile along the East River front. The depots of some of the Long Island railroads are lo- cated here, the place being the distributing point for travel by rail and railway freight traffic for Long Island.
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