William A. Simmons (January 20, 1840 – June 28, 1916) was an American political figure who served as Collector of Customs for the Port of Boston and chairman of the Boston water board. Early life Simmons was born on January 20, 1840, in Boston's North End. His father died when Simmons was 13 years old and he became the primary provider for his mother and younger siblings. He enlisted in the 44th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment in 1862 and served in the Department of North Carolina for six months during the American Civil War. Although Simmons did not receive much of a formal education, he studied law with Andrew W. Boardman and was admitted to the bar in 1867. Politics After his military service ended, Simmons became involved in the Massachusetts Republican Party. He managed the party's efforts in Boston's Ward 2, was a member of the Republican state central committee, and served as chairman of the Republican Ward and City Committee. In 1869 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the Massachusetts Senate. Simmons joined the Bureau of Internal Revenue as a special treasury agent in 1865 and from 1870 to 1874 he was supervisor of internal revenue in New England. He was supervisor during the Sanborn incident and would testify before the Senate that he had assigned a revenue detective to assist John B. Sanborn in his collection of delinquent taxes on the instructions of United States Secretary of the Treasury George S. Boutwell and assistant secretary William Adams Richardson. After Thomas Russell resigned as Collector of Customs for the Port of Boston, Benjamin Butler lobbied for Simmons to get the job. George Frisbie Hoar wrote that the "National executive patronage in Massachusetts seemed given up to advancing the personal fortunes of General Butler" and that Simmons' nomination excited a "deep indignation". Numerous newspapers, including The Boston Globe, The Boston Journal, and the Boston Daily Advertiser, as well as many of the city's businessmen, opposed Simmons' nomination. Merchant Edward W. Kinsley told The Boston Globe that although Simmons was "a man possessed of undoubted talents" he knew "nothing about the duties" of the office of Collector and was "unfit to be collector by training, experience, and probably capacity". However, The Boston Globe also reported that the majority of dispatches received by Senators George S. Boutwell and Charles Sumner were in favor of Simmons. Both Boutwell and Sumner spoke in opposition