Roswell King

Roswell King (1765 – February 15, 1844) was an American businessman, planter and industrialist. King and his son, Barrington King, founded Roswell, Georgia in the 1830s. A son (Roswell King, Jr.), grandson (nicknamed "Ross" or "Rossie"), and great-grandson of Roswell King bore the same name. (Bulloch 86, Myers 1584-85)

Early life

Barrington Hall, built in 1842.

King was born in Windsor, Connecticut, the son of Timothy King, a weaver and Revolutionary naval commander, and Sarah (Fitch) King. At age fifteen, he moved to Darien, Georgia. His early professional life included jobs as surveyor in Glynn County, and Justice of the Peace in McIntosh County.

Plantation manager

He also became manager of Pierce Butler's rice and cotton plantations on Butler and St. Simons Islands, Georgia. The plantations covered hundreds of acres on each island. Five hundred slaves worked and lived there. Roswell King also owned slaves and had a plantation of his own.

In the 1830s, King moved his family from the coast to the Piedmont area around Vickery Creek (referred to as Cedar Creek at the time) that would eventually become Roswell. King had identified this as a good area for the construction of a cotton mill. He had the idea to combine cotton production and cotton processing at the same location. He invited planter friends James Stephens Bulloch and Archibald Smith to join him in the new enterprise.

Roswell, Georgia

When he moved, King transported 36 enslaved African-Americans from his plantation and bought another 42 slaves in Darien to work on constructing the mill, infrastructure and other buildings. The slaves likely worked on his house(s) as well.

King dammed the creek to power a cotton mill that became fully operational by the later half of the decade. The mill was incorporated as the Roswell Manufacturing Company by an act of the Georgia General Assembly on December 11, 1839, with Roswell's son, Barrington King, serving as the company president. Other people named in the act included John Dunwoody and James Stephens Bulloch.

After living in temporary homes for his first years in the area, Roswell King (who had been recently widowed) moved into Primrose Cottage in 1839 along with his recently widowed daughter Eliza King Hand and her children. He died on February 15, 1844, and was buried in what is now referred to as Founders' Cemetery on Sloan Street in Roswell, just to the north of the original location of the mill. Some of his personal "servants" (enslaved African-Americans) were buried near him in unmarked graves.

Roswell's son, Barrington King, and Roswell Manufacturing Company continued to depend on the skills and labor of enslaved African Americans as he built the business in Roswell. According to the 1850 Census Slave Schedules, Barrington King held 70 slaves, and he controlled another 13 slaves held in the name of Roswell Manufacturing Company. In 1860, Barrington King still held 47 slaves. He may have sold some when the heavy construction work was finished.

Slave owner

As powerful and successful men, Roswell King and his sons lived out some of the complexities of their times. Roswell King, Sr. had conflicts with Maj. Pierce Butler when he managed his island plantations in Georgia, because Butler took a more moderate approach to the treatment of slaves than did King. In addition, King was believed to have fathered one or more mixed-race children by enslaved women. (Kemble 201) At least one, Bran, who became a driver on St. Simons Island, was conceived and born during King's marriage.

Roswell King, Jr. (1796–1854), his second son and namesake, took over as manager of the Butler plantations after his father resigned. During his tenure of 1820-1838, the younger King is said to have fathered mixed-race children—including Renty, the twins Ben and Daphne, and Jem Valiant—with slave women Betty, Minda, Judy, and Scylla. (Kemble 176, 201, 238, 249, 269, 273-74) These children and their mothers remained slaves. Fanny Kemble, the younger Pierce Butler's actress wife, attested to these children by her own observations and from stories told her by slaves during her residence at the plantations in 1838-1839, documented in her published journal of those years. She complained to her husband about Roswell King, Jr.'s harsh treatment of slaves. However, Kemble's allegations were countered by King's granddaughter, Julia King, who maintained that Fanny Kemble invented lies about Roswell King, Jr., with whom she had fallen in love, because he refused to return Kemble's affections. (Kemble and Clinton 15-16; Julia King to ____, 24 October 1930) That the marriage of Kemble and Pierce Butler was fraught with conflict, was undermined by episodes of spousal infidelity, and ended in divorce in 1849, are established facts. (Bell 288-310) There is evidence that Kemble not only falsified portions of her journal but harbored racist sentiments that contradicted her ostensible abhorrence for the institution of slavery. (Kemble and Clinton 16; David 162) Further contradiction about the character of Roswell King, Jr. appears in Kemble's journal, in which she apparently quotes King verbatim as he vehemently condemns slavery: "I hate the institution of slavery with all my heart; I consider it an absolute curse wherever it exists. It will keep those states where it does exist fifty years behind the others in improvement and prosperity." (Kemble, Journal 111)

Although Kemble's credibility with regard to the Roswell Kings has been called into question, Roswell King, Jr. provided an epistolary summary of his own "calmly reasoned" view of the brutal system he deplored in The Southern Agriculturalist on 13 September 1828. (David 161)

References

• Bell, Malcolm. Major Butler's Legacy: Five Generations of a Slaveholding Family. Athens and London: University of Georgia, 1987.
• Bulloch, Joseph Gaston. A History and Genealogy of the Habersham and Other Southern Families. Columbia, South Carolina: The R. L. Bryan Company, 1901.
• Cate. Margaret Davis. "Mistakes in Fanny Kemble's Georgia Journal," Georgia Historical Quarterly 44 (March 1960).
• David, Deirdre. Kemble: A Performed Life. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2007.
• Julia King to ____, 24 October 1930. Julia King letters and clippings, MS 1070, Georgia Historical Society, Savannah, Georgia.
• Kemble, Fanny. Fanny Kemble's Journals / Edited and with an Introduction by Catherine Clinton. Cambridge: Harvard, 2000.
• Kemble, Frances Anne. Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839 / Edited with an introduction by John A. Scott. Athens: University of Georgia, 1984.
• Myers, Robert Manson, ed. The Children of Pride: A True Story of Georgia and the Civil War, vol. 3, The Night Season (1865—1868). New York: Popular Library, 1972.
• Walsh, Darlene M., ed. Roswell, A Pictorial History, 2d ed. [Roswell, Georgia]: Roswell Historical Society, 1994.

External links

• "City of Roswell, Georgia, Comprehensive Plan 2025" (pdf). November 7, 2005. pp. 172. http://www.roswellgov.com/files/docs/PDF/compplan_2025/6_Historic_Resources_Element.pdf. Retrieved 2008-01-22.