William Harrison King was born January 18, 1889 in Washington, DC to John S. King and Katie/Catherine Turpin. He was born into a White working class family. His father was a day laborer in 1900 when John King was 50 years old and he was one of seven children. By 1910, Wm’s father had died and he was 21 years old, working as a driver and living with his widowed mother and two teenaged siblings.
He married Emma A. Van Horn and it is in 1917 when the couple shows up at 140 Q St NW in Truxton Circle with the World War I draft registration. In that registration he claimed to support his wife and mother. Census-wise he and Emma appear with his father in law William C. van Horn in the 1920 census. At the time William was working as a salesman for a bakery. The house was one of the Washington Sanitary Improvement Co. homes for White tenants. Based on his obituary, the bakery was probably the National Biscuit Company, which is currently known as Nabisco. He sold National Biscuit Co. products to local groceries in the DC area. By 1930 the couple lived alone. They had no children.
They moved from Truxton Circle to 613 Hamilton St NW and recorded as living there for the 1940 census. In 1952 he died at the age of 62.
Thousands of people have lived in the Truxton Circle neighborhood for over 100 years and they have thousands of stories. The goal of the Truxton Circle History Project is to find every man, woman, and child who lived in the neighborhood using every available source. The Project uses the 1880-1950 censuses, the power of Ancestry and every other online resource to discover and uncover neighborhood history.