William Henry ( gunsmith ) William Henry ( May 19 , 1729 – December 15 , 1786 ) was an American gunsmith and merchant from Lancaster , Pennsylvania , and a delegate for Pennsylvania to the Continental Congress in 1784 , 1785 , and 1786 . Biography . Prior to his service in the Continental Congress , Henry was a gunsmith and provided rifles to the British during the French and Indian War : Henry himself , serving as armorer , accompanied troops on John Forbes ' s successful mission to retake Fort Duquesne in 1758 . By 1760 , according to Scott Paul Gordon , Henry had largely abandoned his occupation of gunsmith and had become a successful ironmonger and merchant in Lancaster . Henry later served in many positions of public responsibility , including Assistant Commissary General to the Continental Army for the district of Lancaster and , in 1779 , Commissary of Hides for Pennsylvania , Delaware , and Maryland . In these positions , Henry managed vast sums of money and acquired and transferred enormous amounts of material . ( He was no longer producing guns , but he did acquire them — along with shoes , hats , flour — to supply them to state and continental troops . ) In 1780 Henry informed Joseph Reed that he had " laid out … between Sixty & Seventy Thousand Pound " just to " purchase Leather and Paying Workmens Wages at the Shoe - Factory [ s ] " he had established " at Philadelphia , Allentown and Lancaster . " His correspondence is filled with letters from Army leaders , including George Washington , begging for arms and other materials . Henry was the Treasurer of Lancaster Country for many years , a position filled by his wife , Ann Wood Henry , after Henry ' s death in 1786 . Henry was an intellectual who helped found Lancaster ’ s Juliana Library - Company in 1759 , which during the Revolution and after was housed in his residence , and he held membership in the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia , whose first " Transactions " ( 1771 ) printed Henry ' s account of his invention of a " Description of a Self - Moving or Sentinel Register " to regulate the flue of a furnace . Henry invented a screw auger , manufactured and sold exclusively at his Lancaster store , and some credit him with inventing the steamboat : the twelve - year - old Robert Fulton , a Lancaster neighbor , visited Henry in 1777 , who had been experimenting since 1763 on boats with steam engines on the Conestoga River ( Fulton ' s own experiments began only in 1786 in England ) . Henry and his family were members of the Moravian Congregation at Lancaster . Henry was the earliest patron of Benjamin West , who lodged in Henry ' s home in Lancaster in 1756 and painted portraits of William and Ann Henry , probably shortly after their marriage . More significantly , Henry encouraged West to paint " The Death of Socrates " ( 1756 ) , perhaps the first history painting produced in the colonies ; West always credited Henry with having initiated the painter ' s interest in history painting , the genre for which the painter became so famous . Legacy . Henry ' s sons carried on his gun business , in Lancaster , in Philadelphia , in Nazareth , Pennsylvania , and then in Boulton , PA . One of his sons , John Joseph Henry , served as a sixteen - year - old rifleman on Benedict Arnold ' s march on Quebec in the fall and winter of 1775 ( he was captured and imprisoned for much of 1776 ) , and later served as president judge of the second District in Pennsylvania from 1795 - 1811 .