William Muir Urquhart

William Muir Urquhart (December 22, 1855 – April 14, 1933) was an American entrepreneur, businessman, and public servant. For many years he was treasurer of Lewis County, Washington. He also served as mayor, councilman, and postmaster of Chehalis, Washington, where he lived and worked for more than fifty years.

He was a merchant, banker, railroad entrepreneur, land developer and timber company investor. He was instrumental in planning the layout the business district of Chehalis in the early days of the city.

Early life Urquhart was born in Cutting's Prairie, north of the Columbia River in the newly created Washington Territory, a vast area of wilderness which had been separated from the Oregon Territory by an Act of Congress in 1853. He was the first member of his family born in the United States. His father, James Urquhart, left Scotland in 1851, taking a ship to New York City, and traveling on foot to New Orleans and by boat up the Mississippi River to Iowa, before joining a wagon train and heading west on the Oregon Trail.

Urquhart's mother and five older brothers and sisters reunited with James Urquhart in early 1855. They traveled around Cape Horn to San Francisco and then to the mouth of the Columbia River by ship, where they transferred to canoes for the last leg of their journey up the Cowlitz River. The trip took them over six months. Urquhart was born later that year in a house his father had built on land he had acquired through a Donation Claim. As the Urquhart family continued to grow in size, they added additional acreage to their holdings and tended to a variety of crops and animals for their own use and for the markets of Olympia on the Puget Sound. For eight years he was the Treasurer of Lewis County; he served as Mayor of Chehalis and also as Councilman; and he was Postmaster for a number of years.

The house the Urquharts built in 1902 on Pennsylvania Avenue is today part of the National Register of Historic Places. He served for many years as a trustee at the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Chehalis as well as a number of other civic and fraternal organizations.

His wife, Anna, died suddenly on February 16, 1920 at their home in the Pennsylvania Avenue-West Side Historic District in Chehalis. Urquhart also died at their historic home on April 14, 1933. They are buried at Fernhill (Urquhart) Cemetery just a few miles from downtown Chehalis. The couple had donated the land for the cemetery and provided a fund for its upkeep.