Posted on 02/21/2011 6:01:03 PM PST by Germanicus Cretorian
Thanks - interesting reading up on him. And Pierce County named after President Pierce. And to bring it back to the slaves/black names - William Rufus DeVane King was one of the largest slave holders in Alabama (country?) at the time.
If you saw the movie "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" and remember Kevin Spacey's character, I think that would be a good characterization of King.
William Rufus DeVane King was the long time room mate (in Washington, DC) of later President James Buchanan. At that time Congress was in session for only a few months every other year, the rest of the time they were in Alabama and Pennsylvania respectively. King was elected VP with Pierce in 1852, but took the oath of office in Cuba where he was staying for health reasons (it took a special act of Congress to allow this). He died at home shortly afterwards, and never set foot in DC while he was VP.
There were whispers that King and Buchanan were more than just roommates.
They said the same thing about Lincoln because he occasionally shared a bed in rooming houses while ‘riding circuit’ in Illinois. Public behavior was different in that century, but any actually evidence of sodomy would have ended in jail or a grave, not a political career.
Didn’t American Indians commonly name themselves after some signifying vision they had in a dream around the time of adolescence? Hence names like Red Feather, Big Eagle, and the like.
Suppose one of this Indians had a more modernized dream, perhaps of a rifle being used in combat. Then he had to take a surname. Might that result in a Hot Rod Lincoln?
I read that, but didn’t want to bring it up in case King was a favorite of yours! Got me to thinking though, but I couldn’t find any information on Martin Luther King’s ancestry - did the slaves sometimes take the names of the Plantation owners? And could M.L. King be descended from a slave of William R. King?
"Tell me, Chief Soaring Eagle, how is it that our people acquire our names?"
"In this manner: that a father, upon hearing of his child's birth, names the child after the first thing he then sees. But why do you ask me this question, Two Dogs ****ing?"
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