William McAdoo was born near Marietta, Georgia, on October 31, 1863. He attended the University of Tennessee and later took a job as a deputy clerk at the U.S. Circuit Court in Chattanooga. He was admitted to the Tennessee bar in 1885 and moved to New York City in 1892 and started a law practice there. He also headed two railroad companies, and later consolidated them into the Hudson Manhattan Railway Co., which dug the first railroad tunnels underneath the Hudson River and then ran trains to New Jersey. He met Woodrow Wilson in 1910 and became a friend and political supporter in Wilson's campaign for US President (a widower, he married Wilson's daughter in 1914). After Wilson's election he appointed McAdoo as Secetary of the Treasury. He also served as the first chairman of the newly formed Federal Reserve Board. When the US railroad industry was being run by the government during World War I, McAdoo was appointed director general of the railroad system.

He left the Wilson administration in 1919 and returned to his law practice. He ran for the Democratic nomination for US President in 1924, but was defeated by Alfred E. Smith. He moved to California and became active in state politics, being elected to the US Senate in 1935. He resigned in 1938, and died in Washington, DC, in 1941.

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William Gibbs McAdoo Jr.

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