King, T. Butler (Thomas Butler), 1800-1864

Thomas Butler King, legislator, planter, and politician, was born August 27, 1800, in Palmer, Massachusetts, and died May 10, 1864, in Waynesboro, Georgia. He migrated to Glynn County, Georgia (1820s), married Anna Matilda Page of St. Simons Island (1824), and had three prosperous plantations by the mid 1830s. King was elected a Georgia senator from Glynn County (1832, 1859), and a United States Congressman (1838, 1840, 1844, 1846); was sent to California by President Taylor to urge the formation of a state government for entrance to the Union (1849); and was appointed commissioner from Georgia to Europe (1860-1862).

Thomas Butler King of Retreat Plantation, Saint Simons Island, Ga., was a Georgia and United States legislator, collector of the port of San Francisco, and Georgia representative to various courts in Europe during the Civil War, with special interests in internal improvements and naval affairs.

American politician.

Thomas Butler King (1800-1864), planter, lawyer, and politician, resided mainly in Glynn County, Georgia.

U.S. representative of Georgia.

Thomas Butler King (1800-1864) was a lawyer, statesman, and diplomat. He married Anna Matilda (Page) King (1798-1859), the daughter of Major William Page of Retreat plantation, St. Simons Island. They had five sons: Thomas Butler King, Jr. (1829-1859), called "Butler;" Henry Lord Page King (1831-1862), called "Lord" or "Lordy," a young lawyer who was killed at Fredericksburg, Virginia; John Floyd King (1841-1915), called Floyd, a planter, Brigadier-General in the Confederate States Army and a member of Congress from Louisiana; Mallery Page King (1836-1899), a colonel in the Confederate States Army; and Richard Cuyler King. Thomas Butler King also had 2 daughters: Florence Barclay King (1836-1912), who married Henry Rootes Jackson (1820-1898), a lawyer, statesman, Confederate States Army officer, and diplomat; Georgia Page King Wilder (1833-1914), who married, first, Gen. William Duncan Smith (1826-1862), and second, Joseph John Wilder (1844-1900). John Randolph Wilder (1816-1879) and his son, Joseph John Wilder were successful cotton merchants and were prominent in civil and social affairs in Savannah. J.J. Wilder was a student in Germany during most of the Civil War. Anna Page Wilder (1873-1956), daughter of Georgia Page King and Joseph John Wilder, married Jefferson Randolph Anderson. Anderson was a descendant of the Wayne, Stites, and Anderson families.

King's wife, Anna Matilda (Page), was the only child and heir of William Page, a native of South Carolina who had purchased Retreat plantation on Saint Simons Island, Georgia, early in the 19th century. Anna Matilda and most of the ten King children remained at Retreat while King was active elsewhere. Although an overseer or one of the sons supervised the actual plantation work, Anna Matilda managed most of the family affairs and finances. She died in 1859.

The Kings had ten children, including William, who died at age six. The others were: Hannah Page (Tootee); Thomas Butler, Jr. (Butler or Buttie); Henry Lord Page (Lordy); Georgia (Josey); Mallery Page (Mall or Pompey); Florence (Flora or Poyer); Virginia (Appie or Tommie); John Floyd (Floyd or Fuddy); and Richard Cuyler (Cuyler, Tip, Hack, Herks).

Hannah married William Audley Couper, the son of wealthy Georgia landowner James Couper and the brother of James Hamilton Couper, a pioneer in scientific farming. She and her family lived at Hamilton, a plantation adjacent to Retreat, which her husband managed for the granddaughter of James Hamilton. The Kings's oldest son, Butler, attended Franklin College in Athens, Ga.; accompanied his father to California; and managed Retreat until his sudden death in 1859. Lord attended Yale, read law, worked in an office in New York in 1860, became captain and aide-de-camp to Brigadier General Lafayette McLaws in the Confederate army, and was killed at Fredericksburg in December 1862. The King daughters, Georgia, Florence, and Virginia, remained at Retreat until 1861, when the war drove them inland. Saint Simons was occupied by the United States Army and the Freedman's Bureau, and the Kings were unable to return home until the late 1860s. Early in the war, Georgia married William Duncan Smith, a Confederate major, later general, who died in 1862; after the war, she married Joseph Wilder. Florence married Henry Rootes Jackson, and Virginia married John Nisbet.

Mallery followed Butler as manager of the family plantation. He became a Confederate officer, served in Georgia and South Carolina, and married Eugenia (Jenny) Grant. Another son, Floyd, served as chief of artillery under Major General William W. Loring in western Virginia during the Civil War and then managed various plantations on the Mississippi River. In love with Lin Capterton of Elmwood, Va. (later West Virginia), Floyd wrote to her during and after the war, but they did not marry. He later became a lawyer in Louisiana and served that state in Congress, 1879-1887. The Kings's youngest son, Cuyler, attended Bloomfield Academy at Ivy Depot near Charlottesville, Va. A lieutenant in the 1st Battalion, Georgia Sharpshooters, he served in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia during the war.

For more biographical information see: Series 2, folder 16; sketch of King in the Dictionary of American Biography ; sketches of King, his brother Henry, and his son Floyd in the Biographical Directory of the American Congress and Edward Marvin Steel, Thomas Butler King of Georgia (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1964).