William L. Strong (1827-1900) was the Mayor of New York from 1895 to 1897. He was the last mayor of New York before the Consolidation of the City of New York on January 1, 1898. A Republican, elected on a fusion ticket by Republican and anti-Tammany Democrats, the reform-minded Strong established the Board of Education, created small parks, and is credited as the "father" of the Department of Correction. The Department of Public Charities and Correction had been abolished by Governor Levi Morton in 1894 to become separate departments. Strong appointed former U.S. Civil Service Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt as Police Commissioner. He was born in Richland County, Ohio; was a dry-goods salesman in Wooster and then in Manchester, Ohio; in 1853 went to New York City, where he engaged in similar business, and in 1869 became the head of the firm of William L. Strong & Co. He is interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. He is an an ancestor to Matthew A. Morgan, an Upstate New York Politician.
