W. B. Belknap

W. B. Belknap, also known as William Burke Belknap (the elder) (1811–1889), not to be confused with his grandson William Burke Belknap (the younger) (1885–1965) or great-grandson William Burke Belknap Jr. (1893–1952), was the founder of W .B. Belknap and Company, an early iron and nail business at Third and Main Street in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, which evolved by 1840 into the mammoth Belknap Hardware and Manufacturing Company. He was born in Brimfield, Massachusetts, where he spent his early years helping his father Morris Burke Belknap (the elder) (1780–1877) in an iron furnace foundry business.

Origins of Belknap Hardware and Manufacturing W. B. traveled to Pittsburgh, East Tennessee, St. Louis, and Cincinnati before settling his hardware business on the banks of the Ohio River in Louisville. He became a prominent Kentucky citizen and businessman who hosted Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman in his home during the American Civil War.

Kentucky family William Burke Belknap, the elder, was the oldest of six children and the only son of Morris Burke Belknap (the elder), and Phoebe Locke Thompson (1788–1873). In 1843 he married Mary Richardson, daughter of William Richardson, President of the North Kentucky Bank. He was the grandfather of Eleanor Silliman Belknap Humphrey. He is buried at Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville.

W. B.'s son Morris Burke Belknap (the younger) (1856–1910), and Lily Buckner Belknap were the grandparents of the Belknap/Moorman twins, Charles H. Moorman Jr. and Morris Burke Moorman, the only children of their only daughter, also named Lily, and Judge Charles Harwood Moorman Sr. The twins were both born on February 25, 1925, and both were killed in action while serving in the U.S. Army in 1944 during the World War II defense of Normandy, France, thus leaving Lily a widow with no living children or parents.