William Morton Meredith was born in Centerville, Indiana in 1835, the son of Samuel C. Meredith and his wife Margaret (Ballard) Meredith.[1] He attended a year of college, but left shortly to work in his father's printing office.[2] He later worked for the Indianapolis Journal.[2] He married Emiline "Emma" Schelenberger in 1859.[1]
With the outbreak of the American Civil War, Meredith enlisted in the Union Army, but Governor of Indiana Oliver Hazard Perry Morton soon appointed Meredith state commissary-general.[2] In 1862, Meredith formed a company of volunteers made up mostly of printers and was selected as the company's captain.[2] This company was a part of the 70th Regiment Indiana Infantry under the command of Benjamin Harrison.[1] While he was posted at Wauhatchie in March 1864, he received a telegram informing him that his wife had contracted spotted fever; she later died of this illness.[1] He was present at the Battle of Resaca (May 13–15, 1864), an event he wrote about in the Chicago Current in 1886.[1] He developed a hernia because of a hard-riding horse and was discharged from the Union Army in Atlanta, Georgia in August 1864.[1]
After leaving the Army, Meredith returned to the Indianapolis Journal.[1] He married Terressa A. Richey in 1867.[1] He later moved to the St. Louis Democrat.[1] He joined the Western Bank Note Company in Chicago in 1875 as superintendent of plate printing.[1]
In 1889, Meredith's former commander, Benjamin Harrison, now President of the United States, named Meredith Director of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.[2] Meredith returned to the Western Bank Note Company in 1893.[2] He returned as Director of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing from 1900 to 1906.[2] He remained employed in the United States Department of the Treasury until his death of bronchopneumonia in 1917 at age 82.[2]
