Lawyer, Editor, and Lecturer, Who Was Prominent in Brooklyn Life.
HIS RECORD IN CIVIL WAR
Won the Congressional Medal of Honor for Conspicuous Bravery in the Field
General Horatio Collins King, lawyer, journalist, and one of the most distinguished veterans of the civil war, died yesterday at his residence, 46 Willow Street, Brooklyn, from heart disease. General King, who was in his eighty-first year, was stricken with paralysis early in 1914, and in August, 1917, he suffered a severe heart attack.
General King was born at Portland, Me., the son of Horatio King, editor of The Portland Jeffersonian, who later became Postmaster General under President Buchanan. He was graduated from Dickinson College in 1858, and after studying law for two years with Edwin M. Stanton, afterward Secretary of War, he entered the law office of Edgar S. Van Winkle in this city. He was admitted to the bar in 1861.
When the civil war began he received an appointment as Assistant Quartermaster with the rank of Captain, and afterward served in the same capacity on the staff of General Heintzelman and General Auger, later becoming Chief Quartermaster of General De Bussy’s division. Still later, with the rank of Major, he was assigned to the staff of General Wesley Merritt. For distinguished service at the battle of Five Forks and in the James River raid, in which he brought up reserves in time to repel a charge of Confederates, he was brevetted Colonel. Later he received the Congressional Medal of Honor for conspicuous bravery. At the close of the war he returned to New York to resume his law practice.
From 1871 to 1873 General King was editor of The New York Star, and then became publisher of The Christian Union, of which his friend, Henry Ward Beecher, was the editor. Later he became publisher of The Christian at Work under the editorship of the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage.
General King was twice married, his first wife having been Miss Emma C. Stebbins, who died in 1864. In 1866 he married Miss Esther Howard, daughter of the late John Tasker Howard.