The Feb. 9 observance of the 234th anniversary of the birth of the Father of Maine Statehood should inspire renewal of Maine entrepreneurial spirit.

William King was born in present-day Scarborough. He apprenticed at his father’s ship mast trade and also at a sawmill. At 21, he left the family farm and worked his way up the Portland Trail. At Topsham, he took a job at a sawmill on the Androscoggin River.

Within a few months, he saved enough to buy the saw. A few months later, he bought the mill and mill stores from his boss while still only in his early-twenties. He took on his older sister’s husband, Dr. Benjamin Porter, as a partner in the enterprises.

By the time he was only 25, he started a ship building business with dry docks in Topsham and Brunswick. His private fleet started a trading empire with Canada, the West Indies and Europe. At 26, he founded Bath’s first bank and was an incorporator of the Topsham-Brunswick toll bridge. In 1809, King and Porter started the first cotton mill in Brunswick.

At 27, William King followed his older brother’s interest in politics and was elected Topsham delegate to the Massachusetts General Court in Boston (comparable to a seat in the modern State Legislature). Records show him a fierce advocate for letting settlers to Maine keep the benefits of their improvements rather than to generate revenue for Massachusetts.

Elder brother Rufus King left his native Maine to start his career and never returned. He was a drafter of the United States Constitution, Governor and United States Senator from New York, Jefferson’s ambassador to England and unsuccessfully challenged James Monroe as the Federalist Party candidate for the Presidency in the 1816 election. Through Rufus’ introduction, William King spent time with Thomas Jefferson.

William King started talk of Maine succession from Massachusetts during the War of 1812, while serving as major general of the Maine Militia. He claimed shipping embargoes ordered by the Massachusetts General Court caused economic hardships in Maine while Boston was unscathed. He called for Maine taxes to be used locally instead of enriching Boston. He gave speeches calling Massachusetts “a foreign power occupying Maine.”

Spurred by King’s fiery oratory, fervor grew for separation of Maine from Massachusetts. In May 1819, King chaired a convention where 70 towns’ delegates called for statehood and designated King as the first governor should Maine win. In a July 4, 1819 referendum, the vote went 17,091-7,132 for statehood.

Congress had to ratify statehood before March 4, 1820, or jurisdiction over Maine would revert back to the Massachusetts General Court. But Congress was divided over slavery. Only 24 hours before the statehood deadline, a group of United States senators hammered out The Missouri Compromise, creating a matching formula for new states – one new slave state for each new free state.

Missouri, a slave territory, won statehood to balance the admission of Maine, a free state. Sen. Rufus King of New York voted against the Compromise, even if it might cost his native Maine statehood, because he held strong abolitionist beliefs and opposed any new slave states.

Gov. William King was elected to a second one-year term by winning 22,014 votes out of 32,083 cast in 1821. He resigned during his second term to become President Monroe’s negotiator with Spain for purchase of the Florida Territory and later United States Commissioner to France. On his return to Maine in 1828, he was appointed Commissioner of Public Buildings responsible for construction of the new State Capitol at Augusta and as U. S. Customs Collector at Bath.

Despite his own lack of formal education, he devoted his adult life to support of higher education, serving a quarter of a century as a trustee of both Bowdoin College and the Maine Literary and Theological Institution, which evolved into Colby College. Modern Maine talks of aspirations and economic opportunity for its young people. It would do well to teach the legacy of William King, who launched a state on entrepreneurial spirit.

Newburgh resident Victor Berardelli was a member of the founding committee for Governor William King Day observances. Much of the research is from the archives of the Scarborough Historical Society.