- Benjamin Franklin King, Jr.
Benjamin Franklin King, Jr. (1857-1894) was an American
humorist andpoet whose work published under the names Ben King or the pseudonym Bow Hackley achieved notability in his lifetime and afterwards.Biography byOpie Read in [http://www.archive.org/details/benkingsverse00kingiala Ben King's Verses] , 1894]Biography
King was born at
St. Joseph, Michigan , March 17, 1857, and died whilst on a speaking tour atBowling Green, Kentucky , April 7, 1894. He was married November 27, 1883 to Aseneth Belle Latham, of St. Joseph, Michigan, and the couple had two children, Bennett Latham King and Spencer P. King, aged nine and five, respectively, at the time of his death. King billed himself as "Ben King, the Sweet Singer of St. Joe". He first came to prominence for a concert given during theWorld's Columbian Exposition . Introduced to thePress Club of Chicago , he was quickly picked up byOpie Read , who invited King to tour with him, reading his poetry with piano accompaniment. [http://books.google.com/books?id=fDGTbYivSdQC Michigan in Literature] By Clarence A. Andrews, Wayne State University Press, 1992, p.257]According to a short biography by Opie Read, as a child he was reputed a piano prodigy; in adult life he was by many deemed a failure for his lack of business instinct. But as a poet, a gentle satirist and a humorist of the highest order, he achieved notability in his short life for a series of newspaper published poems. He appears to have been a favorite of the Press Club of Chicago, and that organisation published a posthumous collection of his works, "Ben King's verse", in 1894, comparing him with
Thomas Hood , a then famous English humorist and poet. In the next quarter century, the book reputedly outsold any other single volume of verses in Michigan.He is buried in the St. Joseph City Cemetery. A monument erected in Lake Bluff Park [Berrien County, Michigan] in 1924 features a bronze bust of King created by Chicago sculptor Leonard Crunelle. On the granite monument base are lines from his poem "The River St. Joe": [ [http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=10593002 Benjamin Franklin King] at FindaGrave ]
Where the bumblebee sips and the clover's in bloom, and the zephyr's come laden with peachblow perfume. Where the thistle-down pauses in search of the rose and the myrtle and woodbine and wild ivy grows; Oh, give me the spot that I once used to know by the side of the placid old River St. Joe!
References
External links
*" [http://www.archive.org/details/benkingsverse00kingiala Ben King's verse] ", 1894, from the Internet Archive
*worldcat id|lccn-nr2002-19076
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