45 Facts About Rufus King

1.

Rufus King was an American Founding Father, lawyer, politician, and diplomat.

2.

Rufus King was a delegate from Massachusetts to the Continental Congress and the Philadelphia Convention and was one of the signers of the United States Constitution in 1787.

3.

Rufus King emerged as a leading member of the Federalist Party and was the party's last presidential nominee during the 1816 presidential election.

4.

The son of a prosperous Massachusetts merchant, King studied law before he volunteered for the militia during the American Revolutionary War.

5.

Rufus King won election to the Massachusetts General Court in 1783 and to the Congress of the Confederation the following year.

6.

Rufus King won election to represent New York in the United States Senate in 1789 and remained in office until 1796.

7.

Rufus King served as the Federalist vice-presidential candidate in the 1804 and 1808 elections and ran on an unsuccessful ticket with Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina.

8.

In 1813, Rufus King returned to the Senate and remained in office until 1825.

9.

The Federalist Party became defunct at the national level after 1816, and Rufus King was the last presidential nominee whom the party fielded.

10.

Nonetheless, Rufus King was able to remain in the Senate until 1825, which made him the last Federalist senator because of a split in the New York Democratic-Republican Party.

11.

Rufus King then accepted President John Quincy Adams's appointment to serve another term as ambassador to Great Britain, but ill health forced Rufus King to retire from public life, and he died in 1827.

12.

Rufus King had five children who lived to adulthood, and he has had numerous notable descendants.

13.

Rufus King was a son of Isabella and Richard King, a prosperous farmer, merchant, lumberman, and sea captain who had settled at Dunstan Landing in Scarborough, near Portland, Maine, and had made a modest fortune by the time Rufus was born.

14.

Richard Rufus King was a Loyalist during the American Revolutionary War, but all his sons became Patriots.

15.

Rufus King attended Dummer Academy at the age of twelve in South Byfield, Massachusetts.

16.

Rufus King began to read law under Theophilus Parsons, but his studies were interrupted in 1778, when King volunteered for militia duty during the American Revolutionary War.

17.

Rufus King was admitted to the bar in 1780 and began a legal practice in Newburyport, Massachusetts.

18.

Rufus King was first elected to the Massachusetts General Court in 1783 and returned there yearly until 1785.

19.

Rufus King was one of the youngest men at the conference.

20.

In 1787, Rufus King was sent to the Constitutional Convention, which was held in Philadelphia.

21.

Rufus King worked with Chairman William Samuel Johnson, James Madison, Gouverneur Morris, and Alexander Hamilton on the Committee of Style and Arrangement to prepare a final draft of the US Constitution.

22.

Rufus King went to work to get the Constitution ratified and unsuccessfully positioned himself to be named to the US Senate.

23.

Rufus King declined an appointment as Secretary of State to succeed Edmund Randolph.

24.

Rufus King then returned to elected politics, for a long time with little success, but he later returned to the Senate.

25.

In September 1812, the unpopular War of 1812 against Great Britain helped the opposing Federalists to regain their reputation, Rufus King led an effort at the Federalist Party caucus to nominate a ticket for the presidential election that year, but the effort failed, as the Democratic-Republican DeWitt Clinton had the best chances to defeat his fellow party member Madison, which made the Federalists field no candidate.

26.

Shortly thereafter, Rufus King celebrated his first success after ten years by being elected to his "second tenure on Senate" in 1813.

27.

Rufus King was the last presidential candidate by the Federalists before their collapse.

28.

Rufus King played a major diplomatic role as minister to the Court of St James's from 1796 to 1803 and again from 1825 to 1826.

29.

Some prominent accomplishments that Rufus King had from his time as a national diplomat include a term of friendly relations with Great Britain and the United States, at least until it became hostile in 1805.

30.

Rufus King was outspoken against potential Irish immigration to the United States in the wake of the Irish Rebellion of 1798.

31.

Rufus King had a long history of opposition to the expansion of slavery and the slave trade.

32.

At the time of his death in 1827, Rufus King had a library of roughly 2,200 titles in 3,500 volumes.

33.

Contrary to his previous position on the national bank of the United States, Rufus King found himself denying the reopening of a Second Bank of the United States in 1816.

34.

Many of Rufus King's family were involved in politics, and he had numerous prominent descendants.

35.

Rufus King's brother William King was the first governor of Maine and a prominent merchant, and his other brother, Cyrus King, was a US Representative from Massachusetts.

36.

Rufus King's wife, Mary Alsop, was born in New York on October 17,1769, and died in Jamaica, New York, on June 5,1819.

37.

Rufus King was the only daughter of John Alsop, a wealthy merchant and a delegate for New York to the Continental Congress from 1774 to 1776.

38.

Rufus King was a great-niece of Governor John Winthrop of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

39.

Mary Rufus King was a lady of remarkable beauty, gentle and gracious manners, and well cultivated mind, and adorned the high station, both in England and at home, that her husband's official positions and their own social relations entitled them to occupy.

40.

Rufus King is vastly the best looking woman I have seen since I have been in this city.

41.

Rufus King is a good hearted woman, and, I think, possesses all that Benevolence and kind, friendly disposition, that never fail to find respectable admirers.

42.

Rufus King died on April 29,1827, and his funeral was held at his New York home in Jamaica, Queens.

43.

Rufus King is buried in the Grace Church Cemetery, in Jamaica, Queens.

44.

The home that Rufus King purchased in 1805 and expanded thereafter and some of his farm make up Rufus King Park in Queens.

45.

The home, called Rufus King Manor, is a museum open to the public.