William Franklin Switzler (March 16, 1819 – May 24, 1906) was an American notable lawyer, journalist, publisher, and historian from Columbia, Missouri.

He studied law under local Boone County, Missouri attorneys Abiel Leonard (1848-1903), (who was also a state supreme court judge), and James Sidney Rollins (1812-1888), and practiced it for several years.

[1] During the American Civil War (1861-1865), in 1863, he was appointed a provost marshal for the 9th District of Missouri, supporting the Union cause of the North.

In 1885, during the administration of Democrat and 22nd President Grover Cleveland, (1837-1908, served 1885-1889 & 1893-1897), he was appointed Chief of the Bureau of Statistics (then in the United States Department of the Treasury, currently now the reorganized Bureau of Economic Analysis in the U.S. Treasury Department), and worked / resided in the national federal capital city of Washington, D.C. during that time.

Switzler Hall on the David R. Francis Quadrangle on the campus of the University of Missouri at Columbia, is named after him.