William Brown Meloney

William Brown Meloney was an American journalist, writer, and public official born in San Francisco on June 6, 1878. He built his career in newspapers and later served as executive secretary to New York City mayor William Jay Gaynor. He is also remembered as the husband of magazine editor Marie Mattingly Meloney, who used the name Mrs. William B. Meloney in her own career.

Alongside journalism, he wrote books including The Girl of the Golden Gate, and he was known as a historian of shipping. During World War I he served in the U.S. Army, reaching the rank of major with the 54th Infantry of the 6th Division. That mix of reporting, public life, and military service gave his writing a practical, worldly feel.

He died on December 7, 1925, in Pawling, New York, at the age of 47. Though not as widely read today as some of his contemporaries, his life brings together several vivid threads of his era: newspaper culture, civic life in New York, and the experience of Americans shaped by World War I.