Charles L. King, president of the Butler County State Bank at El Dorado, had been actively identified with business affairs in this county for fully thirty years. His people were among the early settlers in that section of the county where Leon is now located.
Mr. King is a native of Missouri, having been born in Mercer County February 28, 1862. His King ancestors came out of Germany originally and were early settlers in the State of Ohio. His father, Jacob King, was born in Mercer County, Ohio, in 1840. He was reared and married there, and soon after his marriage moved west to Mercer County, Missouri. In 1870 he came to Butler County, Kansas, and homesteaded the quarter section of land where the Town of Leon is now built. All his active career he was a farmer, was a sturdy and enterprising citizen, and did his work well in whatever relationship he bore to his community. He finally sold his farm and retired to Augusta, Kansas, where he died in 1905. He was a republican, a member of the Christian Church, and always attentive to his church duties and for a number of years served as an elder in the church. Jacob King married Lydia S. Miller. She was born in Mercer County, Ohio, in 1850, and died in Douglas County, Kansas, in 1911. Their children were as follows: W. A., a traveling salesman living at Trinidad, Colorado; Ida S., wife of Johnson Butts, their home being at Oklahoma City, where Mr. Butts is retired; Clara A., wife of John Butts, a loan and real estate man at Wichita, Kansas; Charles L.; H. E. King, who was formerly cashier of the Leon State Bank and died there at the age of thirty-eight years; Nellie, who died when twelve years of age.
Charles L. King had lived in Butler County since he was eight years of age. He attended a rural school and spent the first nineteen years of his life on his father’s farm. He early determined upon a commercial career, and on leaving the farm he gained his first experience as clerk in a general store at Leon. After nine years there he became an independent business man in the real estate and loan field at Leon, but in 1887 removed to El Dorado. Mr. King conducted one of the leading real estate and loan agencies in that city until 1911. In that year, when the Butler County State Bank was organized, he became its president and had directed the destinies of this institution ever since.
Mr. King is one of the substantial men of property in Butler County. He had a fine farm of 800 acres six miles northeast of El Dorado, and associated with Mr. J. B. Adams, cashier of the Butler County State Bank, he owned 320 acres situated in the oil belt of Butler County. In 1914 Mr. King erected his handsome modern residence at 205 South Star Street.
He is well known as a banker and business man over the state, and under appointment from Governor Bailey he served as a director on the penitentiary state board. The City of El Dorado adopted the commission form of government in April, 1917, and Mr. King was elected as one of the commissioners. The commission in turn elected Mr. King as mayor. He is a republican, is an elder in the Christian Church at El Dorado, and had fraternal relations with Patmos Lodge, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, El Dorado Chapter, Royal Arch Masons, El Dorado Commandery, Knights Templar, with the Modern Woodmen of America and the Knights and Ladies of Security.
Mr. King was married in 1890, at Leon, Kansas, to Lydia Chambers, a native of Missouri. Her mother is now deceased, and her father, L. P. Chambers, is a retired resident of Council Bluffs, Iowa.