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William Lawrence Merry was born on December 27, 1842, in New York City. He was the son of Thomas Henry and Candida Isbina (Xavier) Merry. His parentage helps to explain his interests and career, for his father came from a line of New York sea-captains and merchants of English descent, while his mother was a Latin American, apparently from Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil.
At the age of seven, Merry accompanied his father around Cape Horn to California, but returned east for an education in the schools of Massachusetts and at the Collegiate Institute of New York City.
Merry's maritime career was associated with the route between New York and San Francisco by way of Central America. At sixteen he was a junior officer on the steamship George Law between New York and Central America, and in 1862 he was commanding the New York clipper White Falcon on the Pacific Coast. In this year he visited Lake Nicaragua for the first time. Subsequently he had ample opportunity to study the rival canal routes of Panama and Nicaragua. In 1863 he was agent for the United States Mail Steamship Company on the Panama isthmus, making frequent trips over the Panama Railroad between Aspinwall and Panama City. A year later, he was given command of the steamship America, plying between San Francisco and Nicaragua. In 1867, he became general agent in charge of Nicaraguan transit for the Central American Transit Company and the North American Steamship Company, of which his father's old friend, William H. Webb, of New York, was president. For three years Merry "practically lived" on the line of the projected Nicaragua Canal, passing over it "night and day, in steamers, boats and canoes" and making a thorough study of the canal possibilities, which impressed him as superior to those of Panama. In the early seventies, he was with the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, and in 1874 he moved to San Francisco. There he engaged in business, becoming president of the North American Navigation Company, a Pacific Coast line, and serving as consul general of Nicaragua on the west coast. He was president of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce for seven years. "Captain Merry" was an active supporter of a strong navy and the maritime development of the Pacific ports, but he attracted particular attention between 1890 and 1895 as a protagonist of the Nicaragua Canal. He claimed credit for having "first introduced the Canal question to the merchants of the United States from a commercial standpoint". It is said that his enthusiasm for the Nicaragua route arose partly from his financial interest in lands in that country, but the sincerity of his belief in its advantages was not questioned. He was appointed by McKinley on July 17, 1897, as minister to Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Salvador. Residing at San Jose in Costa Rica, he held that position until, in 1907 and 1908 respectively, the increasing importance of Caribbean problems led to the appointment of separate ministers to Salvador and Nicaragua. Merry remained minister to Costa Rica until ill health forced him to resign in 1911. Though he was in such an important position when "dollar diplomacy" was spreading into Central America his printed dispatches in the Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States bear little trace of such methods, dealing mostly with perfunctory matters. Most of the important transactions seem to have been carried on at Washington. His death occurred at the Battle Creek Sanitorium, shortly after he had retired from his post. He was buried in Scarsdale.
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Merry's views are set forth in several canal propaganda pamphlets including The Nicaragua Canal, the Gateway between the Oceans (1895), reprints of an article in the California Bankers' Magazine, October 1890, and a speech before the Trans-Mississippi Commercial Convention at St. Louis, November 28, 1894. He argued that the nation that with the Nicaraguan Government on a joint agreement should control Lake Nicaragua, would then control the destiny of the Western Hemisphere. The decision in favor of Panama naturally thwarted his lifelong ambition to sail through a Nicaraguan canal before he died.
Merry has been described as a "pure Yankee skipper" with quaint speech and ways, who spoke abominable Spanish with a nasal accent. He was generally liked and respected as an honest old gentleman who wanted to do his best both for his country and for Central America. In appearance he was undersized, spare, nervously built and wiry, acquiring some dignity from a remarkable pair of long, pointed side-whiskers.
Merry was married to Blanche, daughter of William S. Hill of Scarsdale, New York.
