My Genealogy Hound

H. P. King, general merchant, was born in 1837, in Tennessee, and is a son of Johnson and Minerva King, natives of the same State. The father was a farmer by occupation, and in 1838 immigrated to Southwestern Missouri. He died at Mount Vernon in 1862, being attacked and killed by bushwhackers. The grandfather, William King, was born in America. Our subject received but a limited education during his youth, and in 1850 bean life for himself, and in 1853 immigrated West, crossing the plains with an ox team. He spent nearly six months on the road to the then Territory of Oregon, where he remained two years, then engaging passage on a sailing brig for San Francisco, Cal., where he arrived in March, 1855. He stopped in California with varying success until October, 1866, when he crossed the Pacific Ocean and returned via the Isthmus, Nicaragua, Central America and the Atlantic to Charleston, S. C., thence through the almost depopulated South, arriving at Van Buren about the 15th of December, 1866. In 1867 he was married in Crawford County, Ark., to Miss R. A. Howell, daughter of Philip and Eliza Howell. He was left a widower in 1876, and the following year married Miss R. E. Pendergrass, daughter of John and Jane Pendergrass, formerly of Tennessee. Mr. King engaged in farming from 1866 until 1876, since which time he has engaged in mercantile life, meeting with good success, and has since accumulated considerable property. In politics Mr. King is a strong Democrat, and greatly in favor of a reduction of the tariff. He is a member of the I. O. O. F. and A. F. & A. M., and himself and wife belong to the Cumberland Presbyterian Church.