Rufus King,Unsung Figure of American History, Helped Crusade End of Slavery - Nicholas Hirshon - NY Daily News

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The stately Jamaica manor of Rufus King, who helped frame the U.S. Constitution and voiced fiery, ahead-of-his-time appeals against slavery, ranks far down the list of the city's favored tourist sites.

His role in shaping the fledgling nation likely fell into obscurity because he never ascended to the presidency - and few historians explored his accomplishments in crucial yet unsung roles as senator and ambassador to Great Britain.

But a researcher who is combing through King's 2,200-title library - among the most extensive in early America - hopes findings about books he read and notes he took may someday vault him into the national spotlight.

"Right now, Rufus King would be considered a second-tier founding father," admitted David Gary, 31, who is exploring King's volumes for his doctoral dissertation. "My research is trying to make him a first-tier."

Scholar David Gary, who once gave tours of the Rufus King Mansion in Jamaica, stands in the library of the former New York senator and “second-tier” (for now) founding father Rufus King. Farriella for News

Gary, whose first job in 2002 included leading tours of King's Georgian estate at 151st St. and Jamaica Ave., has leafed through just parts of the statesman's mix of mostly law and travel tomes.

And yet, only months into his two-year project, Gary has uncovered pamphlets and newspaper clippings that document - for the first time - exactly how King studied to craft his unprecedented argument in 1820 that slavery was illegal.

Gary hopes that painting a fuller picture of King's vision to halt the spread of slavery - four decades before Abraham Lincoln was elected President - will foster greater public appreciation for King's place in history.

"He doesn't have a movie made about him or a documentary," said Kathy Forrestal, the education director at King Manor Museum. "His name isn't on Ken Burns' lips, but we think he should be."

King opposed slavery from the inception of his political career, helping pass the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 that prohibited enslavement in a chunk of territory newly adopted by the Union.

During a Senate debate in 1820 that led to the Missouri Compromise, which admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as free, King boldly declared slavery was "contrary to the law of nature."

Beyond the rhetoric, though, little depth has accompanied accounts of King's anti-slavery stances. That's why Gary thinks it's valuable to know, for example, that King read natural-law advocates who asserted everyone is born free.

At the New-York Historical Society, where many of King's books were donated, Gary also discovered King had clipped a newspaper article that slammed Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, for owning slaves.

"It's a small thing, but it shows King's personal thoughts on the matter that we didn't know before," Gary said, adding he wants to raise King's profile to the level of Jefferson and John Adams.

Skeptics doubted Gary's research would immediately captivate the public and elevate King.

"It's not going to make the network news, but it's something scholars will take seriously," said Jeremy Dibbell of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

But King Manor Museum caretaker Roy Fox figured King, who died in 1827 and is buried blocks from his home at Grace Episcopal Church, will soon get his due.

"I get the feeling we're just getting started," Fox said. "There's a gem in history here to be polished and brought out."

Aviary Exhibit: Audubon Painted Birds in Peril by Aileen Jacobson - Newsday.com

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Hawks, swans, geese, plovers: Around her home in Sagaponack, Roberta Olson sees many kinds of birds nesting or flying by. But she worries about some of them. A few species are becoming sparser, others that should be wintering farther south are now finding Long Island warm enough.

"You might say that birds are really the canary in the coal mine for our entire planet," Olson said recently, standing surrounded by birds of a different sort.

These are depicted in watercolors, painted two centuries ago by history's most famous avian memorializer, John James Audubon, and they fill a large room at the New-York Historical Society in Manhattan. Olson, the museum's curator of drawings, is also the curator of "Audubon's Aviary: Portraits of Endangered Species," which highlights birds that are in peril, already extinct or have successfully rebounded from threatened status.

Although her Long Island bird-watching habit was not a prerequisite for her job, they both reflect her sensibility of caring about wildlife, looking closely at the world and paying attention to details.

The exhibit includes tips from the National Audubon Society on ways to protect birds, such as preserving farmlands and wetlands, patrolling beaches and fighting global warming. A video on imperiled birds is part of the exhibit, as is a dramatic soundscape: Visitors can hear individual birdsongs as they approach some of the paintings, while a whooping crane - audibly, not visibly - seems to fly over the space every 20 minutes. Olson says she had the room painted a blue that is "a little more dusky, like twilight" for this year's endangered-species theme.

The exhibit is the fourth in a five-part series, each one focusing on a different aspect of Audubon's work. Another nice touch: Visitors may borrow magnifying glasses to decipher details in Audubon's intricate portraits from the 1820s and '30s.

Olson says she often observes birds as she rides her horse or just looks out her windows. For years, she says, she regularly saw a barn owl (a bird pictured in the exhibit) before a red-tailed hawk took up residence nearby and scared it away. Just a few weeks ago, she watched two swans she knows from their East Hampton pond flying in that direction from Water Mill.

Olson says new construction worries her. "You can't preserve the species if you can't preserve the land," she says. She sees fewer goldfinches (discussed in the exhibit's video) than she used to. She also recently saw blue jays, woodpeckers and robins, some of which, she thinks, used to fly farther south. She picked up her passion in part, she says, from her father-in-law, an avid birder.

Like many Long Islanders, she says, she walks carefully around the roped-off areas on beaches that protect nests of the piping plover, one of the top-10 endangered birds on the Audubon Society's list and the subject of an Audubon painting. The American oystercatcher, which inhabits the saltwater marsh islands of Jamaica Bay, is another species included in the exhibit that deserves local concern: It's on a watch list, with 72,000 left - only 7,500 of them in North America.

The exhibit's 42 watercolors are endangered, too. They're light sensitive and will soon be sent into a decadelong hibernation in specially designed archival storage containers at the historical society.

Meanwhile, Audubon's pictures invite careful scrutiny: "They always have a narrative," Olson says. "Notice how he has the birds looking at you," or looking at each other. In their interactions - one bird feeds a mate, another appears to mourn a dead partner - they seem human. "This is what makes Audubon a truly great artist," she says. "He really got inside the birds."

"Audubon's Aviary: Portraits of Endangered Species," New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park W., Manhattan, through March 16; $10, $7 seniors and educators, $6 students, free for members, children younger than 12 and Fridays 6 to 8 p.m., 212-873-3400 or nyhistory.org.