Utah Governor. He was an English-born immigrant, who came to the United States at the age of nine with his parents. His parents converted to Mormonism shortly after his birth and he did missionary work as a young man in the South. In 1894, he first served as a tax collector for Tooele County and later as a representative in the Utah State Legislature. in 1905 he was appointed one of the members of the Utah state board of land commissioners. From 1906 to 1908, he served as United States Marshal for the District of Utah. As a member of Senator Reed Smoot's "Federal Bunch," Spry secured the 1908 nomination for governor and was elected on the Republican ticket as Utah's 3rd Governor. He pushed for and received a large appropriation from the state legislature for the construction of the state capitol building, which opened in 1916. Spry also worked for food and drug legislation, promoted the development of the state's natural resources, and established committees on banking, industrial safety, and irrigation and water rights. He was re-election in 1912, achieving notoriety during his second term by refusing to intervene in the execution of labor organizer Joe Hill, even with the pleas from around the world including President Woodrow Wilson. With only circumstantial evidence, Hill was convicted of the January 10, 1914 murdering of a Salt Lake City policeman and his son and was sentenced to death. In 1915, the Republican Party refused to nominate Spry for a third term because of this incident and his unpopular veto of a Prohibition bill. From 1921 until his death in Washington D.C., he served as Federal Commissioner of Public Lands. He is the namesake of the William Spry Agriculture Building that houses the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food.