William B. Ridgely was a United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 Comptroller of the Currency from 1901 to 1908.

William B. Ridgely attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Stephen Van Rensselaer established the Rensselaer School on November 5, 1824 with a letter to the Rev. Dr. Samuel Blatchford, in which van Rensselaer asked Blatchford to serve as the first president. Within the letter he set down several orders of business. He appointed Amos Eaton as the school's...

, where he was a member of the Chi Phi Fraternity. Upon his graduation from RPI in 1881, Ridgely engaged in mining, manufacturing, and banking in Illinois

Illinois

Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

 before President Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...

 named him Comptroller in 1901. During his term, Congress passed legislation extending the corporate existence of the national banks for the second time. Ridgely resigned as Comptroller to accept the presidency of a national bank in Missouri

Missouri

Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...

, which had failed the previous year and was reorganized under his leadership. In 1909 he returned to private business in the Eastern states.