William and Elizabeth King and their children James, John, Elizabeth, Jane, Mary, Catherine and William were among the first pioneers in this area after selling their land holdings in Ireland and purchasing Section 24 in the Six Mile Woods on June 4, 1834. Their son William hated slavery, yet he purchased slaves as the Rector of Louisiana College's Mathews Academy and for his own plantation, and also inherited slaves upon the deaths of his wife and daughter in Edinburgh, Scotland. While there, he completed divinity studies at the New College of the Free Church of Scotland, an anti-slavery church. On May 5, 1848, Reverend King and his fifteen slaves began a journey to Canada, traveling 1,500 miles from East Feliciana, Louisiana, up the Mississippi River through the deep South and on the Ohio River to Cincinnati, then on the Ohio canal system to Toledo, and overland to the King Farm in Delta, a known Underground Station. The homestead had become a Sabbath Center with services in the barn, leading brothers John and William to establish the First Presbyterian Church of Delta. The fifteen freed slaves were placed under the care of the King families on the homestead for fifteen months. Reverend King then went to Canada to arrange for the Elgin Settlement, also called Buxton Mission, in Raleigh Township, Kent County, Ontario, as a safe haven for formerly enslaved people. On November 28, 1849, William and his charges became the first settlers of this colony. Buxton became a destination for fugitives fleeing slavery in the United States, offering landownership, integrated classical education, self-government, independence, and religion. It became a center of industrial and intellectual achievement and the most successful community created for fugitives. William gained international recognition as an Underground Railroad conductor and joined with figures in the struggle to end slavery, receiving honor alongside abolitionists including Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, John Brown and Harriet Beecher Stowe, who portrayed Reverend King and his wife, Mary Phares, as characters in her novel, Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp.