Kathy,
That's a tricky one.
Your best bet might be to gather all documentation you can find from their lives in the United States, including wills. Perhaps these items might provide a clue as to where in Canada they stayed for four months. For example, if a will or obit lists relatives somewhere in Canada, that might be who they stayed with.
Did they apply for citizenship in the U.S.? Sometimes the citizenship forms contain details about how the person got into the States, etc.
As you probably know, ship records weren't usually kept in Canada back then. Since their stay was so brief, there likely isn't any record to be found, unless a child was born or someone died there, and even then, it's iffy.
For example, I have ancestors who died around 1900 in New Brunswick, Canada, and there are no death or cemetery records, either through the province or the church. I have brick walls for all of my ancestors prior to their arrivals in Canada in the 1800s (from England, Ireland and Scotland) because there are no death records to be found and no way of learning their parents' names, birthplaces, etc. Canada was one vast woods and, unless ancestors were in towns and had important positions, and therefore there might be some mention of them somewhere, you've got to hope they at least had the good sense to pass on a family Bible (mine didn't). Mine were all poor farmers.
The Canada GenWeb site has links to the provinces. You might check the provincial sites to see if anyone has transcribed any passenger lists.
http://www.rootsweb.com/~canwgw/html/e-index.htmlDid your King family stay in Kansas?
Kansas State Historical Society
http://www.kshs.org/ You can check this website for homestead records:
http://www.nifc.gov/offline/The website currently says: "The BLM Web site is currently down for unanticipated maintenance."
Have you seen this about Kansas Migrations:
http://skyways.lib.ks.us/genweb/johnson/index.htmlI don't know if this is Harry, the son of Charles and Rhoda:
http://skyways.lib.ks.us/genweb/johnson/library/polk1912.htmJohnson County entries from a 1912 business directory:
"ZARAH
--King Harry, General Store and Postmaster"
Have you found your Kings in the 1880 census?
Regards,
Josephine