Peyton King (physician)

This article is about the pioneer physician. For the attorney and plantation owner, see Peyton King.

Peyton King (born 1795 in Halifax County, Virginia) was a medical doctor practicing in Jones Valley during its pioneer settlement. He was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, and had lived in Georgia before coming to Jefferson County. He was the first professional physician to practice in the area. He constructed a house near Jonesboro, on the Montevallo Road about a mile southwest of the later-established village of Elyton, in 1818 or 1819. The house was used for the first meetings of the Jefferson County Commission, created in 1819, before the completion of a new County Courthouse in Carrollville in early 1820.

In 1822 King was elected to serve on the County Commission that he had previously hosted. On March 7, 1824 he married the former Jane Elmira Findley, daughter of John and Lydia Reese Findley.

Lydia Findley had been married to King's fellow Commissioner John M. Martin after her first husband was shot accidentally, and before they came to Alabama.

In 1830 King began a two-year term representing the county in the Alabama State Senate. In 1833 King moved to Pickens County with his wife and two children: Marielle, and Hampden Sydney.

References

• Dubose, John Witherspoon (1887) Jefferson County and Birmingham, Alabama: Historical and Biographical Birmingham: Teeple & Smith, Publishers; Caldwell Printing Works.
• McGuire, Mrs. C. P., Sr (1900) Records of Pickens County, Alabama. Vol. 3. Tuscaloosa: Willo Publishing Co.