Mrs. William P. King

The sources disagree about who she was. The plaque calls Frances A. King the founder's widow, later Mrs. Tabor; the Handbook of Texas calls her Mrs. Francis Taber, King's former wife, who donated much of the county-seat land. A second King's Fort plaque says her legal claim was disputed. The prize was large. Kaufman won its seat in March 1851 after four elections, the Handbook says, and her deed that year gave 75 acres for the townsite and 75 acres of timber, 150 acres in all, to the commissioners.

What the plaque says

Mrs. William P. King (Frances A. King) (Donor, Land for County seat, Kaufman County) Wife of founder of King's Fort (in 1840), Frances A. King pioneered with great courage and enthusiasm in Republic of Texas. After King's death in 1846, she later (as Mrs. Tabor) entered and won election of Kingsborough for county seat of newly organized Kaufman County. In April 1851 she deeded 75 acres for townsite and a 75-acre timber tract to the county commissioners, James W. Love, J. Larkin Austin and John W. Terrell. King's Fort had grown into village of Kingsborough, later given same name as county. INCISE ON BACK: Erected by Clover Club and Cameo Club (1970)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• No. 1 British Flying Training School Museum — 9.1 mi
  A free museum at Terrell's airport where about 2,200 RAF cadets learned to fly between 1941 and 1945, with logbooks, uniforms, letters and original training aircraft.
• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 25 mi
  A small museum in Harry Myers Park that keeps the evidence on Rockwall's rock wall, sandstone dikes that geologists call natural and folk tales call built.
• Fair Park — 29 mi
  The State Fair of Texas grounds since 1886, where the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition left one of the country's greatest concentrations of Art Deco exposition buildings.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 29 mi
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.

More markers nearby

• Colonel Isham Chisum — steps away
• Kaufman County — steps away
• First United Methodist Church — steps away
• Birthplace of City of Kaufman; Site of King's Fort — 0.2 mi