A King's Freedom

DID YOU KNOW that the triangle is the strongest geometrical shape? Triangular braces, called trusses, are used as supports in many large construction projects.

- Thavius J. Nelson

In the 1800s a revolutionary design of overlapping triangles was used to build covered bridges throughout the South. The old dusty roads of Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi were connected by these sturdy bridges, many of which were the work of Horace King, a remarkable man who, although born into slavery, grew to be recognized as the South’s master bridge builder.

King was born in the Cheraw District of South Carolina on September 8, 1807. He was tri-racial, having African, Native American, and White ancestry. His intelligence and ability must have been recognized early. He learned to read and write at a time when most slaves were purposely kept uneducated, and he was apprenticed to be an expert carpenter.

In 1824 an engineer, Ithiel Town, came to the Cheraw District to construct a bridge over the Pee Dee River. Bridges were very important to growing towns in the South, replacing shallow river crossings or ferries and helping to attract businesses and factories.

But bridges were expensive and hard to build, requiring special materials not readily available in the rural South. Although wood was cheap and plentiful, wooden bridges were usually of a simple design that was only strong enough to cross small streams and creeks—short spans of no more than sixty feet. Ithiel Town had developed a way, using a lattice of triangles called the Town truss, to build wooden covered bridges over much greater distances. The Town truss bridge was light and strong, and its triangular supports could be secured by wooden pegs, called treenails, instead of expensive iron nails—which at the time could only be made one at a time by a blacksmith.