The name King is frequently found in Tennessee records from the early 1800's. Our earliest known King ancestor is Albert King.
 
 

ALBERT AND MARTHA KING   Albert King was born in Tennessee on December 10, 1850. On February 5, 1871 he married his wife Martha Orren in Hamblen County, Tennessee; she was the daughter of Peter Washington Orren and Nancy Hicks. Both Albert and Martha's parents were born in Tennessee, and Martha was also born there on November 10, 1850. Martha's father Peter Washington Orren served in the Union Army and died in a military hospital; both he and Nancy Hicks Orren are buried in Sinking Creek Cemetery in Elizabethton, TN. (Martha may have been an illegitimate child born to her mother before marriage, and Peter Washington Orren may not have been her actual father.)   About 1872-1873 Albert and Martha moved from Tennessee to North Carolina. Albert King worked as a mica miner; the family was poor and seems to have moved quite frequently within Mitchell County, present- day Avery County, and adjacent counties in eastern Tennessee. On the 1880 Mitchell County census they are shown in Bakersville township, while on the 1900 Mitchell census they are listed in Toe River township. Martha King died on May 11, 1905 and was buried in Pitman Cemetery on Henson's Creek, Avery County. On December 11, 1906 Albert King remarried Hattie Huskins, age 36, in Mitchell County. Albert died on December 27, 1908 and was buried next to Martha in Pitman Cemetery.    According to the 1900 census, Martha King was the

mother of 12 children, 7 of whom survived childhood. Only 5 children (William, Nancy, Catherine, Jeff, and John) are ever shown with the couple on census records; it is unknown where the other two daughters spent their childhood.