I shared with you, last week, our visit to the Red Oak Creek covered bridge and how much I enjoyed seeing it. I am also impressed with the story of the builder of the bridge.
Horace King was the most respected bridge builder in west Georgia, Alabama and northeast Mississippi from the 1830s until the 1880s. He constructed large town lattice truss bridges over nearly every major river from the Oconee in Georgia to the Tombigbee in Mississippi and at nearly every crossing of the Chattahoochee River from Carroll County to Fort Gaines.
We had many covered bridges in our nation at his time but there was a difference in this Horace King. He was a freed slave. His master, John Godwin, freed Horace King in 1846.
Horace King was born a slave of African, European, and native American ancestry in South Carolina. He moved with his master, John Godwin, (1798-1859), a contractor, to Girard, Alabama, a suburb of Columbus, where Godwin had the contract to build the first public bridge connecting these two states.
It is thought that King planned the construction and directed the slaves who did the building of it. It appears that Godwin saw the ability King had in the construction of bridges and nurtured these skills. King served as superintendent and architect of major bridges built in the three states without any supervision of John Godwin.
Godwin allowed King and his other slaves a great degree of freedom, and it is thought that he gave King his freedom to protect this valuable asset from his creditors. On the other hand, King could have bought his freedom. The relationship between the two men remained firm until the death of Godwin in 1859.
King built more than a hundred bridges in his lifetime. He married Frances Gould Thomas, a free slave, in 1839.
They had five children. His wife was born in 1825 and died 1864. He built Moore’s Bridge (mid 1850s) over the Chattahoochee River between Newnan and Carrollton and accepted stock in the bridge as payment. He moved his family to this site in 1858 and tended the bridge and farmed until 1864, when the Union Cavalry burned the span. King moved about freely during this time and apparently maintained a home at Moore’s Bridge and one in Girard.
The Civil War brought an economic boom to Columbus and King, along with other contractors, worked for the Confederacy.
The Alabama governor pressed King into service, against his will, to place defensive obstructions in the lower Alabama River. King claimed that the federal government owed him, as a Unionist, for the confiscation or plundering of his property by Union troops. He married again one year after his wife’s death(1864) to Sarah Jane Jones McManus.
They had no children.
During Reconstruction King became a Republican and served twice as a member of the Alabama House of Representatives. He was unable to meet very often in the first year because of rebuilding wagon and railroad bridges as well as textile mills and warehouses. It appears he didn’t do well financially because he accepted municipal and corporate bonds or over-speculated as a contractor or because of the depressed economic condition of the region.
In 1872 King and his family moved to LaGrange where he expanded his business to the building of stores, houses and college buildings. He died May 28, 1885. Obituaries praising his building skills appeared in the Atlanta, LaGrange, and Columbus papers.
His funeral procession made its way around what is now LaFayette Square in LaGrange. Businesses closed and people of all colors arrived to pay their respects. His obituary read “He had risen to prominence by force of genius and power.”
His unmarked grave was found in 1978 and now has a large granite headstone reminding of who he was and what he did.
His children, Washington W.(1843-1910), Marshall N.(1844-79), John Thomas(1846-1926), Annie Elizabeth (1848-1919), and George (1850-99) continued their father’s work. They built bridges and various structures in LaGrange, Atlanta and east Alabama.) John T. King served as a trustee for Clark College, which is now known as Clark Atlanta University from the 1890s until the 1920s and was one of the contractors who built the Negro Building at the Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition in 1895.
The history of Horace King is still alive. His legendary status stems from three factors. He was a great bridge builder. He forged a career that was unique for a man of color and his experience appeared to show slavery at its best.
He and his master had great respect for each other. In 2004 the Horace King Overlook, a deck attached to the historic Bridge House at Riverfront Park in Albany, was dedicated in King’s honor. The structure includes a miniature replica of one of King’s covered bridges.
Wyrick is a Sharpsburg resident and a regular columnist for this newspaper |
