Frank R. King, born in Leighton on October 30, 1859, was the son of Hartwell Richard and Mary Henderson (Smith) King. Raised on a farm and educated in common schools in Leighton and Trinity, he attended the University of Alabama from 1875 to 1876, then returned to Leighton to work as a clerk in his brother William’s mercantile business. He succeeded his brother in the firm in 1880, and it later became known as F. R. King & Company. His professional life supported a strong personal commitment to preserving the history of northwest Alabama. In 1902, he invited people through an advertisement in the Leighton News to bring historically significant objects to his store, where he labeled and displayed them with his own collection. In 1904, he organized the first reunion of former students and professors of LaGrange College, established by the Methodist Church in 1830 as Alabama’s first state-chartered college and a forerunner of the University of North Alabama in Florence. He also commissioned Captain A.A. McGregor, a former LaGrange professor, to write a history of the institution, and for many years he lobbied for federal recognition of the original site, formally requesting its designation as a National Park in 1935. In 1923, he wrote to residents of Colbert, Franklin, Lauderdale, and Lawrence counties to form a regional historical association, leading to the founding of the Tennessee Valley Historical Society at the Chamber of Commerce Building in Sheffield on November 15, 1923, with 37 charter members. King served as the group’s first president and remained in that position for the rest of his life. During his tenure, he continued collecting historical materials and worked to preserve much of the region’s early history. In 1923, he secured the City of Tuscumbia’s donation of fragments from a War of 1812 cannon to the Alabama Department of Archives and History. The next year, his efforts brought about a Smithsonian Institution archaeological survey of Native American mounds in Colbert County that were threatened by rising Tennessee River waters caused by construction of Wilson Dam. He also directed the Tennessee Valley Historical Society’s historical marker program from 1927 to 1938. Frank R. King died on December 23, 1939, and was buried in the King Cemetery in Leighton.