Samuel King Sr. fought with the Continental Troops commanded by Col. Daniel Morgan in the Revolutionary War.
In 1777, he was taken prisoner by the British, but later escaped. He suffered during the bitter winter at Valley Forge, serving as part of Brig. Gen. Thomas Conway’s Brigade.
After the war, he and his wife, Elizabeth Underwood Davenport, moved from Virginia to North Carolina.
By 1790, he had a grant of 300 acres on the west side of the French Broad River. He and his sons built the first bridge, known as the King Bridge, across the French Broad River near today’s South Rugby Road.
Samuel King Sr. was one of the first members of the old French Broad Baptist Church, the first church west of the Blue Ridge.
His son, Benjamin, was ordained at the old French Broad Baptist Church in 1800. The Rev. Benjamin King was one of the first pastors at Mud Creek Baptist Church and one of the first five ministers in the old French Broad Baptist Association. He and his wife, Rebecca Shipman King, were two of the founders of the First Baptist Church in Hendersonville.
Their graves, along with other family members, are protected from development and encroachment.
Over several generations, many of the grave stones were vandalized.
There were about 20 graves with field stones in a 60 by 30 feet area when the cemetery was first surveyed in 1993 by the Henderson County Genealogical and Historical Society. The cemetery was badly overgrown.
P.T. Green Construction Co. discovered the old graveyard when the company was building a subdivision on Finley Cove Road. A slave cemetery was found to the rear of the property, said George Jones with the Henderson County Genealogical and Historical Society.
“P.T. Green donated two full lots to the Samuel King family,” he said. “The other site was a slave cemetery.
“It’s painfully difficult to find a developer, such as Pete Green, who will help save a cemetery,” Jones said. “Now it’s simply a matter of maintenance.”
Vandalism destroyed some of the cemetery and several trees came down in the cemetery during Hurricane Ivan. One was uprooted directly on a grave, opening up a cavity.
The slave section of the cemetery is through the woods, behind the cemetery, on a separate lot.
Both lots were deeded by Pete Green to descendants, forming the Samuel King Sr. Historical Cemetery.
The cemetery is on the county’s GIS cemetery layer and can be found in Tall Pines Subdivision at the corner of Tall Pine Road and Pine Knot Trail.