City Readers Digital Historic Collections at the New York Society Library

William Bayard, Jr., a merchant and banker, was born in 1761 in New York City. With Herman Le Roy and James McEvers he founded the mercantile firm LeRoy, Bayard & McEvers, which was dissolved in 1816 upon McEvers' retirement, and continued by Bayard as Leroy, Bayard & Co. (Lanier 118). He was director of the Bank of America, president of the Bank for Savings at its beginning in 1819, president of the Chamber of Commerce, governor of the New York Hospital, trustee of the Sailors Snug Harbor, member of the St. John's Society and the New York Society Library, and one of the owners of the Tontine Coffee House. He was chairman of the committee to receive General Lafayette in 1824. He was chairman of the December 1815 meeting at the City Hotel that drafted the petition for the Erie Canal (submitted to the legislature by DeWitt Clinton), and was the chairman of the meeting that arranged the celebration upon the canal's completion in 1825 ("Memoir" 511). He served as a vestryman at Trinity Church from 1801-1821. 

Bayard was the son of Colonel William and Catherine McEvers Bayard of New York. He married Elizabeth Cornell in 1783; they had seven children. 

Bayard was close friends with Alexander Hamilton, who was taken to Bayard's house in Greenwich Village after being injured in a duel with Aaron Burr on July 11, 1804. Hamilton died at the house the next morning ("William Bayard"). 

Bayard died on September 18, 1826, in Westchester, New York. He is buried in the Trinity Church Cemetery.