William Henry (May 19, 1729 – December 15, 1786) was an American gunsmith, engineer, politician, and merchant from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and a delegate for Pennsylvania to the Continental Congress in 1784, 1785, and 1786. Henry is also noted for his contributions in the development of the first steam engines.
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Biography
William Henry was born near Downingtown, Pennsylvania to a family of Scots-Irish extraction. Prior to his service in the Continental Congress, Henry was a gunsmith and provided rifles to the British during the French and Indian War: Henry himself, serving as armorer, accompanied troops on John Forbes's successful mission to retake Fort Duquesne in 1758. By 1760, according to Scott Paul Gordon, Henry had largely abandoned his occupation of gunsmith and had become a successful ironmonger and merchant in Lancaster.
Henry later served in many positions of public responsibility, including Assistant Commissary General to the Continental Army for the district of Lancaster and, in 1779, Commissary of Hides for Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. In these positions, Henry managed vast sums of money and acquired and transferred enormous amounts of material. (He was no longer producing guns, but he did acquire them—along with shoes, hats, flour—to supply them to state and continental troops.) In 1780 Henry informed Joseph Reed that he had "laid out…between Sixty & Seventy Thousand Pound" just to "purchase Leather and Paying Workmens Wages at the Shoe-Factory[s]" he had established "at Philadelphia, Allentown and Lancaster." His correspondence is filled with letters from Army leaders, including George Washington, begging for arms and other materials. Henry was the Treasurer of Lancaster Country for many years, a position filled by his wife, Ann Wood Henry, after Henry's death in 1786.