William Morris Meredith (June 8, 1799 – August 17, 1873) was an American lawyer and politician from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He served as the United States Secretary of the Treasury, during President Zachary Taylor's Administration. Early and family life Born on June 8, 1799 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, William Morris Meredith was the eldest son of William Tuckey Meredith (died 1844), a successful attorney and after 1814 president of Schuylkill Bank, who narrowly lost to Nicholas Biddle the presidency of the Bank of the United States. During the year he was admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar, 1795, William Tuckey Meredith married the writer and poet Gertrude Gouverneur Meredith (née Ogden) (died 1828). Gertrude was the niece of Lewis Morris, as well as of Gouverneur Morris, and highly educated and respected in her own right, as well as published in Dennie's Port Folio. The couple ultimately had eleven children. William Tuckey Meredith served on the Philadelphia Common and Select Councils, and on the Vestry of Christ Episcopal Church, among other leadership positions in the city. His brother Jonathan Meredith (d. 1872) was a leader of the Bar in Baltimore, Maryland. Another brother was the Civil War colonel Sullivan A. Meredith. William M. Meredith graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1812 (graduation at age 13 not being unusual at the time). After assisting his father in the family's saddlery business, he read law, and was himself admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar. After his mother's death in 1828, William Morris Meredith helped raise his younger siblings. On June 17, 1834, at the age of 35 and after a ten-year engagement, Meredith married the former Catherine Keppele (d. 1854). They had one son (William, b. 1838, later a published essayist and poet) and four daughters: Gertrude Gouverneur Meredith, Euphemia Ogden Meredith, Elizabeth Caldwell Meredith, Catherine Keppele Meredith. Catherine Meredith also helped care for her husband's siblings, and his father when he was disabled by a stroke in 1839. Career Meredith was admitted to the bar in 1817, and began practicing law. He drew considerable public attention, as did his slightly senior colleague James C. Biddle (later his brother-in-law), by questioning the conduct of Judge Frank Hallowell in Commonwealth v. Cook, a murder case in which three black men were charged with killing a boy. During the jury's deliberation, the American Daily Advertiser published an article which defense counsel thought highly biased. The judge allowed counsel