David Ward King (October 27, 1857 – February 9, 1920) was an American farmer and inventor of the King road drag. His invention, which was the horse-drawn forerunner of the modern road grader, influenced American life by improving the widespread dirt roads of his day to the extent that they could accommodate the advent of the automobile, rural mail delivery and mail order catalogues.
Family and early life
King is and was often referred to as "the Missouri farmer", which he was. However, he was born, reared and educated in Springfield, Ohio, and came from a very prominent and wealthy family of that city.
David Ward King was the grandson of his namesake, Springfield merchant and real estate developer David King. His paternal grandfather, David King, was probably born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1796. His paternal grandmother, Almena Caldwell King, was born in Hillsborough, New Hampshire, on August 16, 1809. However, she moved with her parents when she was young to early Portsmouth, Ohio, which is in southernmost Ohio at the confluence of the Scioto River and the Ohio River, where her father established a successful carpentry business. Both of Ward's paternal grandparents had been orphans. Ward's grandfather, David King, was found as a toddler wandering the streets of Baltimore during a yellow fever epidemic in which both his parents presumably died. David knew only his own name and could tell nothing about his parents. He was found in a Baltimore hotel and taken in by a Robert Quigley who had a farm near Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, and who had "wagoned" to Baltimore for supplies.Rev. Luther A. Gotwald, D.D, David King (Circa 1880), unpublished. Luther's bio of David & Almena on line with commentary Hard copy of original held by Clark County Public Library, Springfield, Ohio. While Robert Quigley did rear and educate David King on his Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, farm, he did not adopt him, which is why David's last name stayed King. The Quigleys were devout members of the nearby Middle Spring Presbyterian Church. David King grew up, regularly attending that church, which began a strong tradition of religious correctness in the King family that beyond question made its way down to Ward.Bio of Robert Quigley on line. A hard copy of this biography is held by the State Library of Pennsylvania, Call number 929.1 Sw77. Robert Quigley was also the uncle of Captain Samuel Brady and Major General Hugh Brady, sons of his sister, Mary Quigley Brady. Swope, p.140. Captain Brady is still remembered for having leaped the Cuyahoga River near present-day Kent, Ohio, to escape pursuing Indians in what is known today as "Brady's Leap". There is a park in Kent today and a rest stop on the Ohio Turnpike named "Brady's Leap" in his honor. Samuel Brady was a foster cousin to David King. However, Samuel Brady died in 1895, before David King was born, which means they never met. However, as close as David remained to the Quigley descendants, it is highly likely that David at least knew his foster first cousin, Major General Hugh Brady.
Upon attaining adulthood, Ward's grandfather David King obtained an apprenticeship as a store clerk in Portsmouth, Ohio, where he met Ward's grandmother, then-teenage Almena Caldwell. However, her older brother and father fell from a small boat and drowned in the nearby Scioto River. Soon thereafter, Almena's mother died of grief. Her Uncle Hannibal Gilman Hamlin (first cousin to Lincoln's first Vice President, Hannibal Hamlin) became the guardian of her and her brother, Hamlin Caldwell, moved them to Cincinnati and saw to their education. David King married her there when she was seventeen.David King's obituary says they married in Portsmouth, but there is no record of that marriage in Portsmouth. Rowdies burned the court house in Cincinnati during the War of 1812. So there is no record of their marriage in Cincinnati. However, the Hamlin family history (Andrews, H. Franklin. "A Genealogy of James Hamlin of Barnstable, Massachusetts". Exira, IA, 1902) says they married in Cincinnati, which makes sense since Almena was living there at the time.
After their marriage, David and Almena soon moved to Tarlton, Ohio, where David put his store clerking experience to good use by opening a general store. Tarlton was on Zane's Trace, which at the time started at the Ohio River across from Wheeling, West Virginia, and passed through Zanesville, Lancaster, the intermittent state capital of Chillicothe and ended at the Ohio River in their previous home town of Portsmouth. The store prospered and David started investing in real estate, which built their wealth substantially over their years in Tarlton.
All did not go well for David and Almena, however. As David often did, he took his wagon "across the mountains" to Baltimore to get supplies for his store—a trip that would take him a month every time he did it. While he was away for his trip in the late summer of 1831, he left Almena in Tarlton with their infant children, as he always had until then. Tragically, their three young sons, Alexander Caldwell King, born September 5, 1827, James Hamlin King, born July 3, 1829, and John Quigley King, born July 24, 1831, all died of smallpox within weeks of each other on August 27, August 28 and September 20, 1831.Gotwald, John, Stories of King Family and Its Part in the Development of Downtown Springfield, p.1. Available at the Heritage Center Library, Clark County Historical Society, Springfield, Ohio. This history gives an account of the early days of David King that is clearly inaccurate. The biography of David King written by Luther Alexander Gotwald is clearly much more accurate. This footnote is just to document that the first three King children died of smallpox. Almena had to deal with this catastrophe alone.
Ward's father, Robert Quigley King, who was born on August 13, 1832, in Tarlton, was their first child to survive. Understandably, Almena insisted on going along with David on his supply trips after that, carrying with her the infant Robert Quigley King. Their next child was Samuel Noble King, who was born in Tarlton on October 22, 1834. He went all his life by his middle name of "Noble". The Kings named him after their country neighbor, Samuel Noble, who had come from Emmitsburg, Maryland, to become one of the first settlers of Tarlton and who had a large farm just south of Tarlton.Samuel Noble bio Mary Elizabeth King, was born to David and Almena in Tarlton on April 1, 1837, and David King, Jr., later to become a Civil War colonel, was born in Tarlton on September 11, 1839.
As time passed, Tarlton began to lose some of its importance. The state capital was moved from nearby Chillicothe (its last location outside Columbus) to Columbus, Ohio, in 1816, and the National Road (present U.S. Route 40 or more roughly Interstate 70) went through the center of Ohio. This road started at Baltimore and ending in Illinois. So, the focus of commerce in Ohio shifted from the communities along Zane's Trace to the center of the state. Among the cities the National Road crossed was Springfield, Ohio, where it arrived in 1836 and stopped for ten years while lawmakers argued about where it would go from there. Located at that terminus, Springfield especially boomed during those ten years.
Several of Robert Quigley's grandchildren, the Rodgers families, had moved to Springfield. David's childhood companions were Robert Quigley's Rodgers grandchildren instead of Robert's children. Robert Quigley probably took in David King out of "empty nest syndrome", since his own children were grown and likely out on their own at the time he found David. According to the Quigley Family History, Robert Quigley's second daughter Jennet "Jane" Quigley married James Rodgers, her Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, neighbor, and continued to live near the Robert Quigley farm. So, it was Robert Quigley's grandchildren, Richard Rodgers, Mary Rodgers, Rachel Rodgers, Dr. Robert Rogers and William Rodgers who lived close to the Quigley farm during David's childhood. They would have been the children with whom David King grew up and with whom he would have been particularly close. Their daughter Mary Rodgers married a Cumberland County neighbor, Isaac Ward. Their daughter Rachel Rodgers never married. Their son, Dr. Robert Rodgers, married Effie Harrison, daughter of a Pennsylvania Militia brigadier general. Their son William Rodgers married the sister of Effie Sarah Harrison. All of these Quigley grandchildren, their spouses and families, apparently except Eleanor, moved to Springfield, Ohio in 1831 (source in footnote says 1833). Modern day Littleton & Rue Funeral Home now occupies the Rodgers mansion at 830 North Limestone Street, Springfield, Ohio.Its web site has this to say about the Rodgers family in Springfield.
"Dr. Robert Rodgers came to Springfield in 1833. He was born September 17, 1807 in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. The young physician lived with his wife, Effie Harrison Rodgers, and their seven children in a large two story brick house that stood on the north east corner of North Limestone Street and North Street. This site is now occupied by the Springfield News/Sun Newspaper plant. A few doors up North Street in a house that early Clark County Historians describe as "handsome" lived his brother and sister-in-law, William and Sarah Harrison Rodgers. These two brothers worked very closely together. When William first came to Clark county in 1832, he was a merchant. When ill health caused his retirement from that field, he bought a tract of "wild" land north of the city. He supervised the clearing and the partial improvements to the land. Then in 1851 he was a constituent member of the company who organized the Springfield Bank. Located on the west side of North Limestone Street close to Main Street, it later became The First National Bank. William would serve on the Board of Directors for many years. While no children were mentioned for William and Sarah, Dr. Rodger's two sons would become very active in the banking industry.
Three doors south of the bank Dr. Rodgers had his office. Here was organized the Clark County Medical Society on May 31, 1850 with Dr. Rodgers serving as the President. At one meeting of the Medical Society, Dr. Rodgers, being a skilled surgeon, read a paper describing a new operation he had performed, the first Cesarean Section done in Clark County.
A few years after his arrival in Springfield, he began buying land in the northern section of Springfield. In 1848 he laid out the first of five additions. In 1909 a Richard Rodgers laid out the sixth. These additions include the area north from Chestnut Street to the alley between Cassilly and Cecil streets and from North Limestone Street to Rodgers Drive. On an early city map, they list Limestone Street as the "Urbana Pike." Also listed for this area were streets by the name of Gallagher, Hill, Center and Race." The web site also states the comedian Jonathan Winters is a direct lineal descendant of this family and thereby of Robert Quigley as well.Rodgers family in Springfield