Mitchell Campbell King

Silhouette portrait of Mitchell Campbell King (1832/33 in Göttingen wearing the Hanoverian colours and student cap)

Mitchell Campbell King (b. June 1815 in Charleston, South Carolina, USA; d. 1901) was a planter and physician in the Carolinas.

Mitchell Campbell King was the son of teacher, Lawyer and Judge Mitchel King (Kingo) (b. 8 June 1783 in Crail, Fife, Scotland; d. 12 November 1862 in Charleston) and his first wife Susanna Campbell (b. 1788 in Scotland; d. before 1830 in the Carolinas). King headed to South Carolina in 1810 and both married on 23 February 1811 in Charleston. They had seven children. Mitchell C. King was the second oldest and with him began the family tradition in using his mothers maiden name Campbell in remembrance of the families Scottish heritage. He studied medicine at the Charleston Medical College and Göttingen University, Germany. In Göttingen he was friends with Amory Coffin (1813–1884) and John Lothrop Motley, the three of them became friends with the later German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck there in 1832, and both, Bismarck and King joined Corps Hannovera Göttingen, a German Student Corps committed to academic fencing, as fellows. Mitchell C. King finished his medical education with an M.D. from Charleston Medical College and settled on one of the family's farms in South Carolina and Georgia. In the summer time the King family lived in the mountains of Flat Rock in the western part of North Carolina. Later in his life he concentrated on practicing as a physician in Henderson County. He had correspondence with Bismarck until 1875 and Bismarcks letters to him are preserved in the Library of Congress while some of Kings letters are kept by the Otto-von-Bismarck-Stiftung in Friedrichsruh near Hamburg, which is a commemorative German Government Foundation in the memory of the Chancellor of the German Empire like the Presidential libraries in the United States.

Mitchell C. King married Elizabeth Laura Middleton (b. 27. April 1820 in Charleston; d. on 15 February 1838) in Charleston. They had eleven children. He was buried on Magnolia Cemetery (Charleston, South Carolina).

References

• University of North Carolina: Mitchell King Papers, 1801–1862
• Kösener Korpslisten 1910, 70. Göttingen (Hannovera), No. 121
• Thomas E. Mullen and Helmuth Rogge: Zwei unbekannte Briefe Bismarcks: gerichtet an seinen Göttinger Jugendfreund Mitchell C. King in Historische Zeitschrift Vol. 202 (1966), pp 352–362 (in German with text of the letters in English)[1]
• G. W. Curtis (Editor): The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley, 1889, Chapter II: Germany; University Life Internet Archive

External links

Persondata
Name	King, Mitchell Campbell
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Short description
Date of birth	1815
Place of birth
Date of death	1901
Place of death