Maine Memory Network

This portrait of William King, Maine's first governor (1820-21), was painted by Philip Spooner Harris, circa 1855, from Gilbert Stuart's 1806 portrait of King as a young Bath businessman.

Philip Spooner Harris (1824-1884), a portrait painter and great admirer of Gilbert Stuart, lived in Bath near the end of Gov. King's life. Harris practiced the art of portraiture in the Eliot Block of Bath from 1850-1864 before relocating to New York.

The original Gilbert Stuart portrait of King is part of the Maine State House Portrait Collection in Augusta. The Harris copy is owned by the Patten Free Library in Bath.

William King (1768-1852) is best known as the father of Maine Statehood and the new state's first governor.

Born in Scarborough, this son of a merchant falsely accused of being a Loyalist, made his own way in the world becoming a shipbuilder and merchant in Bath before turning to populist politics.

In the Massachusetts Legislature he championed "The Betterment Act" (1808) which aided squatters and the "Toleration Act" which abolished town support of the standing order church.

Ann Nesbeth King was born Ann Nesbeth Frazier in Boston in 1785 and died in Portland in 1859.

She married William King (1768-1852) a Massachusetts Senator and the first governor of Maine from 1820-1821. In this letter from Ann to her husband, she expressed her frustration that King has not returned home, because Maine was not admitted to the Union as quickly as they had expected.

This tintype of Gov. William King (1768-1852), Maine's first governor, probably is a copy from a daguerreotype that was made in about 1845. The tintype probably was made in 1865.

King was from Bath. He served as governor from 1820-1821 and had been instrumental in gaining statehood for Maine in 1820.