Benjamin King (ca. 1755–1840), plumber and blacksmith, was born on the Isle of Man. He later spent time in Carron, Scotland, where he likely trained in the iron industry before traveling to France. King reportedly joined the French republican army and participated in the unsuccessful attempt to defeat the slave insurgency in Saint Domingue. By 1793 he was in Baltimore working as a plumber. King was employed by 1803 in Washington, D.C. He worked on the United States Capitol and laid gutters and built a fire engine for the President’s House during TJ’s occupancy. King spent many years as a master blacksmith at the Washington Navy Yard. He received a patent in 1811 for an improvement in welding scrap iron into bars and another in 1817 for a machine for drilling holes on horizontal metal surfaces, and he was a militia volunteer at the Battle of Bladensburg during the War of 1812. King was generally acknowledged to be an extremely adept ironworker, although Benjamin Henry Latrobe complained that “the strange wildness of his temper alternately embroils him with every body with whom he has any thing to do.” By 1836 King had transferred to the Navy Yard in Philadelphia, where he died (Edward C. Carter II and others, eds., The Journals of Benjamin Henry Latrobe [1977–80], 3:67–9; PTJ description begins Julian P. Boyd, Charles T. Cullen, John Catanzariti, Barbara B. Oberg, James P. McClure, and others, eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 1950– , 45 vols. description ends , 27:318n; John C. Van Horne and others, eds., The Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Benjamin Henry Latrobe [1984–88], 1:286, 529, 3:7–9, 238–42; Abstract of Expenditures on the President’s House, 1805 [DNA: RG 53, ESRT]; King’s Invoice to TJ for a Fire Engine, [ca. 8 July 1805] [MHi]; MB description begins James A. Bear Jr. and Lucia C. Stanton, eds., Jefferson’s Memorandum Books: Accounts, with Legal Records and Miscellany, 1767–1826, 1997, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Second Series description ends , 2:1158; List of Patents description begins A List of Patents granted by the United States from April 10, 1790, to December 31, 1836, 1872 description ends , 102, 179; King to James Madison, 22 June 1836 [DLC: Madison Papers]; Philadelphia North American and Daily Advertiser, 16 Sept. 1840; Washington Daily National Intelligencer, 21 Sept. 1840).