Henrietta King died in 1925 and at the time, it was reported nationwide in the newswires. Today, there may be fewer people who know of her, but there are probably few Texas women who are as influential as Mrs. King was in their own part of the state. Born in Missouri in 1832, she lived most of her life in Texas, associated with the King Ranch. She moved to Texas with her blended family in 1850 where her father Hiram Chamberlain founded a Presbyterian mission church in Brownsville. She was well educated for her time and married Captain Richard King in 1854 when she was about twenty-two years old. Between 1856 and 1864, the couple had five children: Henrietta Maria (1856 – 1917), Ella Morse (1858 – 1900), Nathan Richard (1860 – 1922), Alice Gertrudis (1862 – 1944) and Robert E. Lee (1864 – 1883). The couple first made their home on the south Texas ranch in a crude block house. The ranch was located between Mexico and the more populated areas of Texas. Their wealth was tied up in the land at the time Richard King died in 1885. Mrs. King spent the next forty years associated with the farming and ranching operations which she and other family members managed. Under their leadership, the ranch prospered and grew, more than doubling in acreage.
Henrietta Maria Morse Chamberlain was born in St. Louis, Missouri on July 21, 1832 to Hiram Chamberlain, Jr. (1797 – 1866) and Maria Morse Chamberlain (1796 – 1835). Hiram was from Monkton, Vermont and was a graduate of Middlebury College, the first college in Vermont, founded as a school for religious education. He also obtained a degree from Princeton University. Hiram was ordained as a minister of the Gospel in 1825 at a New York City Presbyterian church. He entered the ministry as a representative for the American Home Missionary Society at the West. He began to serve as a pastor soon after his ordination. He and his family moved to St. Louis where he served as a minister and published a religious periodical. The couple had three children (including two sons who did not survive infancy) of which Henrietta was the middle child and only daughter before Maria died in 1835. Following Maria’s death, Hiram continued to serve as minister at various congregations in Missouri.
Hiram was then married to a Sarah H. Wardlaw before she also died in 1840. About two years later, He married Anna Adelia Griswold with whom he had eight more children born between the years 1843 and 1857. Hiram and the family had come to Texas in 1850 and organized the first Presbyterian church in the Rio Grande Valley. During the years 1862 to 1865, he served as a chaplain in the 3rd Regiment of the Texas Infantry during the Civil War. Not long after the end of the war, Hiram died. He is buried in the Brownsville City Cemetery. Anna survived him another sixteen years until her death in 1882. At the time, she was residing with one of her daughters in Brooklyn, New York. She is also buried in the Brownsville City Cemetery.
Henrietta honored her father Hiram Chamberlain by commissioning a stained glass window, now known as the “Chamberlain Window,” built by Tiffany of New York, also as a memorial to Richard King, her late husband. The main window was first installed in the Presbyterian church which she financed and was a member at Corpus Christi. It and nine other Tiffany windows were installed in 1902. Some twenty-eight years later, the church was undergoing a renovation and no longer wanted to use them, so the congregation donated them to a Presbyterian Church in Alice, Texas. Below is the largest one, the one dedicated to her father. The inscription on it is from Revelation 14:13 from the Bible, and it reads as follows: “And I heard a voice from Heaven saying unto me. Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth; Yea, said the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors; And their works do follow them.”
Image credit: Tiffany Census, http://www.cambridge2000.com
Mrs. King died on Tuesday, March 31, 1925 at the age of ninety-two after having been ill for a while. By the time of her death, only one child was living, Alice Gertrudis King Kleberg whose husband Robert Justis Kleberg, Jr. (1853 – 1932), former King attorney and rancher, was the primary ranch manager with Henrietta King. At the time, she was also survived by twelve grandchildren. Although most newspaper articles only mentioned Mrs. King’s personal wealth, some also referred to her generosity, philanthropy and her interest in the people of the area. Much larger today, Kingsville’s population was about 4,770 then and was mostly supported by the ranch and its various businesses.
Some articles also mentioned the activities of the ranch, including a large cattle business that produced around 100,000 calves in a year, an operation that raised prize horses and bulls, a dairy and other aspects of the business. Mrs. King also was noted for granting land for a company to build a railroad through the ranch, though a train ride through the property still took three hours. She also was responsible for the building of schools, a hotel, at least one church, primary funding for a hospital, and many other projects.
Her funeral service was set for the next Saturday at First Presbyterian Church in Kingsville. The following day, the weekly Brownsville Herald reported on the service. It was officiated by Dr. S. E. Chandler, president of Daniel Baker College of Brownwood, former pastor of Corpus Christi’s Presbyterian church and a family friend, and was assisted by Reverend Herbert Springal and George F. Williams. A funeral cortege of two hundred mounted riders, employees of the Santa Gertrudis Ranch, stretched for several miles in the procession to the cemetery. Mrs.King was laid to rest in the Chamberlain Masonic Cemetery in Kingsville.
One 1925 article speculated that the ranch, amounting to more than 1,280,000 acres with land in seven Texas counties, would be liquidated following her death. Now, almost one hundred years later, it is still largely intact.
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