He was born in Prague, Bohemia (now Czech Republic) in 1826, fourth among some fifteen children of John L. Taussig and Charlotte (Bondy), his wife. Hebrew blood ran in the veins of his father, a native of Prague who manufactured cotton goods on a small scale.
Completing the classical course in the University of Prague at eighteen, William turned to the study of chemistry. In 1850 he received the degree of M. D. from the St. Louis Medical College.
In 1847, he emigrated to the United States. The next year found him in St. Louis, Mo. , chemist for Charless, Blow & Company, frontier druggists. During the cholera scourge which swept the city in 1849 he distinguished himself by his fearlessness as apothecary at quarantine. After receiving the degree he established himself for practice in nearby Carondelet, of which town he was elected mayor in 1852.
On the reorganization, in 1859, of the St. Louis county court, an executive body, Taussig was elected one of the five reform members. Among his first official acts was a report on the application of U. S. Grant to be superintendent of county roads--unfavorable, because he was not sure of Grant's loyalty to the Union. In general, however, he administered so wisely the affairs of the county, torn as it was between two camps during the forepart of the Civil War, that he was reelected in 1863 and designated presiding judge. Following the destruction of an insane asylum in Fulton, Mo. , by marauders and the failure of the state to provide relief for the homeless unfortunates, he at personal risk took them to St. Louis where they were lodged first in St. Vincent Asylum and later in the city insane asylum, the cornerstone of which he laid in 1864.
During the war he held the post of examining surgeon for drafted soldiers. Compelled, through long illness, to give up the medical profession, he was appointed collector of internal revenue by Lincoln in January 1865, and was thereby led to a complete change of career.
After resigning the collectorship (1866) he turned to banking, and was president of the Traders' Bank from 1866 to 1869. Following the liquidation of the bank, he became associated with the project to bridge the Mississippi at St. Louis, and soon became the manager, later president, of the bridge company. In this capacity he faced business problems almost as great as the structural problems which confronted the bridge's engineer, James Buchanan Eads. The bridge company and others growing out of it were merged in 1889 in the Terminal Railroad Association, of which Taussig remained president until his retirement in 1896. Through his judgment and foresight, and because of the confidence of railway executives in his integrity and impartiality, all railroads entering the city joined in the establishment of a single union station--a traffic reform of the first importance. The station built under his administration was the finest of its time.
When he died of pneumonia in his eighty-seventh year, he was still head of the bridge company, a director in the St. Louis Union Trust Company, a director of Washington University, president of the Self-Culture Hall and Tenement House associations, and active in the Ethical Society. He was survived by his widow, a daughter, and two sons. His body was cremated and the ashes placed in Bellefontaine Cemetery.
In politics he was associated with Carl Schurz, B. Gratz Brown, William M. Grosvenor, Henry T. Blow, and Emil Preetorius in promoting the Liberal Republican movement.
He was a model citizen, a cultured gentleman, practical yet imaginative, industrious and generous (he long gave shoes and clothing to needy school children anonymously).
On May 3, 1857, he married Adele Wuerpel of St. Louis, daughter of a German teacher who had quit the Rhineland in 1848.
