William attended Transylvania College and graduated from Litchfield Law School in 1816 before inheriting Locust Grove at his father’s death in 1822.
He married Mary Carson O’Hara, a wealthy Pittsburgh heiress in 1823. Following his wife’s death in 1828 at Locust Grove, he sold it to his brother-in-law, George Hancock, and moved to Pittsburgh to administer the vast O’Hara estate, now the location of Schenley Park.