The Historical Society of Avon ParkAVON PARK, FL · EST. 1886
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William King’s Elective and Appointive Public Offices (1897–1929)

William A. King (1853–1929), the Birmingham-born English settler credited alongside his wife Mary Ann King with establishing Avon Park’s earliest permanent settlement in August 1887, occupied public office across four decades.[maxwell-1976][fa-1893-01-11] From the town’s initial attempt at municipal government following the 1894–95 freezes to the height of the Florida Land Boom, King served as councilman, statutory alderman, two-term mayor, and inaugural Highlands County Commissioner and Board Chairman.[savannah-1897-01-15][fl-secstate-1921-1922]

Chronological roster of public offices

Office Jurisdiction Dates of Service Basis of Tenure
Councilman Town of Avon Park January 1897 – 1 March 1899 Elected at municipal incorporation under general law; served until dissolution referendum.[savannah-1897-01-15][savannah-1899-03-09]
Alderman Town of Avon Park 23 May 1913 – late 1913 Named by Florida Legislature under Chapter 6662, § 47, pending regular municipal election.[lof-1913-6662]
Mayor (First Term) Town of Avon Park 13 December 1919 – 6 February 1922 Elected at regular municipal election; served until qualification of Mayor D. A. Sapp.[maxwell-1976]
County Commissioner, District 1 Highlands County 23 April 1921 – 6 January 1925 Appointed by Governor Cary A. Hardee; elected Board Chairman (9 May 1921); re-commissioned after 1922 election (8 December 1922).[fl-secstate-1921-1922][fl-secstate-1923-1924][wpa-hrs-highlands]
Mayor (Second Term) City of Avon Park 2 December 1925 – 11 February 1929 Elected at regular municipal election; served through boom, 1926 hurricane, and 1927 charter; died in office.[maxwell-1976]

Refutation of the DeSoto County commission tradition

A persistent family tradition recorded on biographical and cemetery profiles asserted that William King had served on the Board of County Commissioners of DeSoto County prior to the creation of Highlands County in 1921.

A systematic examination of the biennial Report of the Secretary of State of the State of Florida for every two-year cycle from 1887 (the year DeSoto County was created from Manatee County) through 1920 disproves this claim.[sos-reports-1887-1920] Across thirty-four years of official executive commission rosters, no William King or Wm. King was ever commissioned as a county commissioner or constitutional county officer of DeSoto County.

The family tradition conflated geography with office: King resided within DeSoto County from his 1887 arrival until 1921, and Avon Park constituted Precinct 14 of DeSoto County. When the northern sections of DeSoto County were severed to create Highlands County under Chapter 8513 in April 1921, District 1 was centered on Avon Park, and Governor Hardee commissioned King as its inaugural commissioner.[fl-secstate-1921-1922] His county commission service was entirely within Highlands County.

Legislative and administrative actions in office

Municipal governance (1897–1899 and 1913)

In January 1897, following the devastation of local citrus groves by the Great Freezes of 1894–1895, thirty-five local electors voted to incorporate Avon Park under Florida’s general municipal statutes, electing Clark D. Knapp as mayor and William King as one of five town councilmen alongside B. F. West, L. W. Mix, H. B. Todd, and J. T. Hendricks.[savannah-1897-01-15] This initial municipal government provided local road and property regulation until 1 March 1899, when town voters voted 35 to 12 in a special referendum to abolish municipal incorporation to escape tax burdens during the agricultural depression.[savannah-1899-03-09]

When the Florida Legislature re-established local government fourteen years later by enacting the charter of the Town of Avon Park (Chapter 6662, Laws of Florida 1913, approved 23 May 1913), Section 47 designated William King as an inaugural alderman alongside W. O. Skipper, G. F. Kellogg, W. H. Daugherty, and H. E. Godwin under Mayor Herbert Seaverns.[lof-1913-6662] The board organized municipal departments, established property assessments, and authorized the sinking of the town’s first four-hundred-foot deep municipal water well on Main Street in early 1915.

First mayoral administration (1919–1922)

King was elected Mayor of Avon Park on 13 December 1919.[maxwell-1976] His administration presided over post-World War I commercial growth and the transformation of Avon Park into an industrial lumber and crate center. Between 1919 and 1921, three major industrial facilities opened on the town’s southern rail spur: the Flint Lumber Company sawmill, the cooperative Mutual Crate Company, and the Avon Manufacturing Company, alongside the development of the Mill Quarters residential district. King managed municipal utility extensions, street layout, and town marshal appointments during a period when the town population reached 890 residents in the 1920 federal census. He served until D. A. Sapp was elected mayor on 6 February 1922.[maxwell-1976]

Inaugural Highlands County Commissioner and Chairman (1921–1925)

Governor Cary A. Hardee commissioned William King as County Commissioner for District 1 (Avon Park) on 23 April 1921 under Chapter 8513.[fl-secstate-1921-1922] When the inaugural board assembled for its first informal organizing session in Sebring on 9 May 1921, the commissioners elected William King Chairman of the Board of County Commissioners of Highlands County.[wpa-hrs-highlands]

King guided the board through the creation of the county apparatus:

  • County-seat referendum: Managing the contentious July 1921 special election between Avon Park and Sebring, which Sebring won by 67 votes.[wpa-hrs-highlands]
  • Highways and road districts: Creating Special Road and Bridge District No. 5 (Avon Park) and approving contracts to hard-surface the Scenic Highway (State Road 8) north toward Frostproof and south toward Sebring, linking the isolated ridge communities.[fl-secstate-1923-1924]
  • Administrative continuity: At the November 1922 general election, while three of the four other inaugural commissioners were replaced by new members, King was re-elected by District 1 voters and re-commissioned by Governor Hardee on 8 December 1922.[fl-secstate-1921-1922] He served through 6 January 1925, when William A. Marshall succeeded him.[fl-secstate-1923-1924]
  • Courthouse promotion: On 25 July 1925, following his commission tenure, King joined a delegation of leading citizens petitioning the county commissioners to issue construction bonds for a permanent county courthouse in Sebring.[wpa-hrs-highlands]

Second mayoral administration and death in office (1925–1929)

King returned to municipal leadership upon his election as mayor on 2 December 1925.[maxwell-1976] His second administration coincided with the zenith and subsequent deflation of the Florida Land Boom:

  • Charter expansion: Overseeing the passage and implementation of Chapter 10320 (Special Acts of 1925) and Chapter 12514 (approved 6 June 1927), which elevated the municipality to the “City of Avon Park” and annexed thirty-six sections (23,040 acres) into the corporate boundaries.
  • Municipal power plant disposition: In February 1927, Mayor King and the City Council approved the sale of municipal electric generating assets to the Florida Public Service Company, clearing the way for construction of the utility’s $45,000-kW central steam-electric generating station on Lake Lotela, which opened on 31 January 1928.
  • Storm recovery: Leading city relief and reconstruction efforts following the hurricane of 18 September 1926, which struck the Ridge and Lake Okeechobee regions, damaging local structures including the historic frame schoolhouse.

King served continuously until 11 February 1929, when his automobile was struck by a northbound Seaboard Air Line train at the Main Street grade crossing in downtown Avon Park; he died of his injuries two hours later.[maxwell-1976] City Council President Edgar A. DeLaney, Sr., assumed duties as Mayor Pro-Tem until a special municipal election on 2 April 1929 chose C. S. Donaldson to complete the term.[maxwell-1976]

Arrival date and grove location

Contemporaneous records place William and Mary Ann King’s arrival in Avon Park in August 1887. In his published technical treatise “Pineapple Culture,” read before the Avon Park Township Horticultural Association and published in the Pabor Lake Pineapple (January 1893) and The Florida Agriculturist (11 January 1893), King stated: “Five years ago last August I planted the first slips in Avon Park, just as an experiment.”[fa-1893-01-11] This fixes his planting and residence to August 1887. Oliver Marvin Crosby independently corroborated meeting King aboard a steamer from England in late 1886 or early 1887 before recruiting him to the Lake Forest townsite.

King’s initial experimental grove was situated within the original townsite plat of Section 22, Township 33 South, Range 28 East, where he maintained citrus and pineapple plantings with lemon and orange trees set twenty-five feet apart and pineapples interplanted in rows between the tree lines.[fa-1893-01-11] In 1894, the Kings deeded the property at 20 East Pleasant Street for the construction of the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer, securing the founding parcel for the town’s oldest surviving church building.

Visual records and photographic holdings

No cataloged photographic prints, glass negatives, or digitized portraits of William A. King or Mary Ann King exist in the public collections of the State Library and Archives of Florida (Florida Memory) or the Library of Congress. Physical photographic holdings relating to the King family and their early townsite residence are held in the permanent local collections of the Avon Park Historical Society Depot Museum.

References

Where this comes from

Evidence
corroborated — More than one independent source agrees.
Review
unverified — Drafted from sources but not yet checked by a volunteer.
Rights
society

Sources

  1. State of Florida, Office of the Secretary of State, Report of the Secretary of State of the State of Florida for the Period Beginning January 1, 1921, and Ending December 31, 1922, pages 109, 324–325 (1923) · official
  2. State of Florida, Office of the Secretary of State, Report of the Secretary of State of the State of Florida for the Period Beginning January 1, 1923, and Ending December 31, 1924, pages 106–107, 386 (1925) · official
  3. Legislature of the State of Florida, Chapter 6662 (No. 242), Laws of Florida 1913, Special Laws, section 47 (1913) · official
  4. Works Progress Administration, Historical Records Survey, Historical Sketch of Highlands County / A Brief Sketch of the Creation and History of Highlands County (1939) · archival
  5. The Morning News (Savannah, Ga.), The Morning News, Savannah, Georgia, 15 January 1897, page 6, Florida column: the incorporation of Avon Park and the election of its officers (1897) · newspaper
  6. The Morning News (Savannah, Ga.), The Morning News, Savannah, Georgia, 9 March 1899, page 6: the election at Avon Park on whether the municipal government should continue (1899) · newspaper
  7. Leoma Bradshaw Maxwell, The First Hundred Years of Avon Park, Florida, pages 199 and 212 (references/the-first-hundred-years-of-avon-park_leoma-bradshaw-maxwell_1976.md) (1976) · book
  8. William King, via The Florida Agriculturist (DeLand, Fla.), The Florida Agriculturist, 11 January 1893, page 6: Pineapple Culture in DeSoto County, by Wm. King (1893) · newspaper
  9. Secretary of State of the State of Florida, Report of the Secretary of State of the State of Florida, biennial rosters of county officers, 1887–1920 (1921) · official

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