[1][2] He traveled with his father and brothers Samuel Houston King and Francis King[3] overland in 1852 with forty or fifty other pioneer families to El Monte, the oldest American settlement in Los Angeles County, along the San Gabriel River (now the Rio Hondo), which was inhabited by a mixture of emigrants, largely Texans.

The King family laid out a town there that was called Lexington,[1] the present site of El Monte, California.

[4] On October 14, 1923, King died at his home in Boyle Heights, 90 years old and the oldest member of the bar in Los Angeles.

Then they and Judge Scott opened a law office on Main Street, a short distance south of the Los Angeles Plaza.

King was also a judge, and he was praised by the Los Angeles Herald in December 1853 for putting an end to the practice by the city marshal of spending Sunday "in arresting and imprisoning Indians, supposed to be drunk, until Monday morning and discharged on paying a bill of two dollars and a half each, one dollar of which is the fee of the Marshal."

[5] In 1855 he issued a ruling that Governor Pio Pico "had no authority by law to sell the personal property, Cattle, Horses, &c., of the Mission of Santa Barbara.

[1] In March 1854, King was one of the members of the California Militia Company called the Monte Rangers, organized by John G. Downey and others.

King, as a Southerner, demonstrated his pro-slavery attitude when as the secretary of the Democracy of El Monte organization, signed his name to their resolution: That we will cheerfully support the nominees for State and County officers [of the Democratic Party] at the next general election, and that we will use all honorable means to defeat our opponents, under whatever name they may assume, more especially those who style themselves Black Republicans.

The governor sent the arms, but army officers at San Pedro held them up, preventing the activation of the Monte Mounted Rifles.