The third president of the Buffalo Board of Park Commissioners, William Gottleib Hengerer was born 2 March 1839 in Wurtemburg, Germany. He came to the United States with his parents in 1849, and the family settled in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He moved to up to Buffalo in March, 1861, to take a job as a clerk in a dry goods store. Shortly after that, the Civil War broke out and William Hengerer enlisted with the newly forming 21st New York Infantry. He started his two year enlistment as a private in May, 1861, aged 22. He was promoted to corporal that October, and then to sergeant the following month. He was mustered out with his regiment at the conclusion of his enlistment in May, 1863.
After his military service he returned to the dry goods trade as a clerk with the same Sherman & Barnes Company which had employed him before his military service. He was not long before he had advanced in the firm. In 1874 he became the junior member of the reorganized firm of Barnes, Bancroft & Company, which in turn became Barnes, Hengerer & Company in 1885, and then, upon the death of Mr. Barnes, yet another reorganization was made on January 1, 1896 becoming the William Hengerer Company, of which Mr. Hengerer was president and senior partner.
He was named to the Board of Park Commissioners in December, 1884. When Board President Sherman S. Jewett died in December, 1897, Mr. Hengerer was elected to succeed him as President. He held that office only a short while, until his own retirement from the board in May 1898.
He died in California on 3 December 1905 in Los Angles, California, where he was traveling, with his family, due to his ill health.
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