William Carr Lane (1 December 1789-6 January 1863) was the Whig Mayor of St. Louis from 14 April 1823 to 1829 (preceding Daniel Page) and from 15 November 1837 to 1840 (interrupting John Fletcher Darby's terms) and Governor of the New Mexico Territory from 15 July 1852 to 6 May 1853 (succeeding James S. Calhoun and preceding David Meriwether).
Biography[]
William Carr Lane was born in Fayette County, Pennsylvania in 1789, and he served in the US Army in Indiana from 1816 to 1819 before becoming a lawyer in Vincennes. He went on to move to St. Louis, Missouri, serving as its first mayor from 1823 to 1829, and again from 1837 to 1840. He went on to serve as President Millard Fillmore's Governor of the New Mexico Territory from 1852 to 1853, during which time he seized territory in the Mesilla Valley for the construction of the First Transcontinental Railroad, an unauthorized seizure which was only legitimized by the Gadsden Purchase. He went on to return to St. Louis a year later, and he died there in 1863.