Born in 1755, Rufus King was the eldest son of a prosperous Maine merchant.   After graduating at the top of his class at Harvard in 1777 and briefly serving in the Revolutionary War in Rhode Island, King studied law in Massachusetts.   He proved a good lawyer and was quickly elected into public service.   He was a member of the Massachusetts state legislature and a representative in the Confederation Congress.   In 1787 he was a framer and signer of the constitution and helped the document become ratified in Massachusetts.   Shortly thereafter King moved to New York City and was elected to the Senate after one month of residency.   As a member of the Federalist Party in the Senate, he strived to implement the ideas of strong central government and prompt payment of national debt that his good friend Alexander Hamilton advocated.  

In 1796 he was ambassador to Great Britain where he helped shape American maritime policy.   He served in the post until 1803, through the administrations of Washington, Adams and Jefferson.   On taking his leave from Britain, King George III told King he was sorry to see him leave, “for your conduct here has been so entirely proper, both as it has regarded the interest of your own Country and of this, as to have given me perfect satisfaction.”   He retired from public life to King Manor in 1806 but eventually returned to the Senate during the tumultuous years of the War of 1812.   During the conflict he stressed country over party and became a rallying point for unity.   He was the last standard bearer for the Federalist Party and was defeated in the 1816 presidential election against James Monroe.   He returned to the Senate in his twilight years and spoke against the spread of slavery during the debates on the Missouri Compromise. He stood on the Senate floor and amongst a crowd of free blacks said, “I have yet to learn that one man can make a slave of another.   If one man cannot do so, no number of individuals can have any better right to do it.” King’s words were radical at the time and it was another 43 years before the Emancipation Proclamation caught up to his ideas.

King always had the idea of settling on his country estate and retiring, but his nation always found more work for the civic leader.   He lived off and on in King Manor until his death in 1827.   He was buried next to his wife Mary Alsop King, who had died in 1819, at Grace Episcopal Church, which is a block east of King Manor on Jamaica Avenue.  Rufus and Mary had five sons who survived to adulthood: John, Charles, James, Edward, and Frederick.