About This Project

This project brings together documented relatives and candidate King families from Marion County, Florida. The proposed chain from Charles and Julia King through James, Samuel, Buster and Gloria is not a completed pedigree. Gloria’s parents remain unconfirmed, and the earlier Samuel records require careful identity comparison.

Census research identifies James King with a son indexed as Sam’l Z. King, age 12 in 1880. A separate Cunningham record for Samuel King records a birth date of August 12, 1879, age 89, and death on December 24, 1968. It does not name Buster. That funeral file cannot support the earlier claim that the census Samuel lived to be 100 or was Buster’s father. See the original-record review.

Buster’s 1985 Florida death certificate and his funeral record, re-read in September 2026, both name his father Zack King and mother Martha Johnson (an earlier transcription read “Jack”). Bernice King Daily is explicitly identified as his daughter, with Benjamin Daily as son-in-law. Beulah C. Davis is named without a stated relationship. Neither that file nor the Sam record establishes Gloria’s parents. Eddie and Willie King have competing parent information and should not be described as Gloria’s probable siblings on that basis.

Barklee’s father, Clarence Douglass Sanders Jr., was born June 11, 1952 in Ocala and died December 27, 2025 in Cortland, New York. He was married to Catherine Sanders. His family-held identity documents supply the full middle-name spelling; his death certificate records his parents as Clarence D. Sanders Sr. and Gloria A. King. The father’s dates and birthplace are not established by that certificate.

The California divorce index lists Gloria A. King and Clarence D. Sanders in Merced County in December 1967. Both initials match, but the index supplies no image, ages, children or marriage date. This is an unconfirmed identity lead. The separately documented Westfield/Chicago Clarence Sanders family also remains a candidate; neither record establishes that man as Barklee’s grandfather. The Merced research updateexplains the evidence and the court file still to be examined.

Clarence Jr. settled in the Cortland and Virgil area, studied political science at SUNY Cortland, worked in construction and raised a family. His obituary names Catherine, mother Gloria, sister Mildred and stepfather David. David’s surname has not been confirmed. Catherine was raised as Catherine Mary Sullivan; her exact biological parents remain an open research question.

Barklee Unitas-Ali Sanders was born on January 19, 1994 in Cortland, New York. He enlisted in the United States Army and served as a Signal Support Systems Specialist from 2014 to 2020. He deployed and served in the same military that had, 150 years earlier, fought the Civil War. After his service, he entered the technology industry in San Francisco, working as a systems engineer. He built AiVAClaims, an AI-powered platform to help other veterans navigate the disability claims process. He has traveled to 29 countries, including returning to the African continent: Togo, Ethiopia, South Africa.

Barklee’s service, work and entrepreneurship are part of his own history. The available records do not establish that he was the first in every earlier generation to hold a pension, savings or a professional career. The ancestry connecting the earlier King households to Gloria is still under investigation.

Family history grows stronger when the evidence and the open questions remain visible together.