[2][3][4] He inherited estates and coal and lead mining interests at Whitfield, Northumberland on the death of his father.
[5] Politically, Ord was a left-wing Whig, a follower of Samuel Whitbread.
[1] He married Mary Scott, daughter of the Rector of St Lawrence, Southampton, Hampshire and sister of Jane Harley, Countess of Oxford.
Their only son, also named William Henry (1803–1838), was a barrister and Member of Parliament for Newport, Isle of Wight, married Frances Vere Lorraine in 1829 but died aged only 36 in 1838.
In 1855 his father left his estates to his son's widow Frances (who remarried Sir Edward Blackett, 6th Baronet in 1851) and to his niece, Anne Jane Hamilton, who married Rev John Alexander Blackett, Rector of Wolsingham, the youngest son of Christopher Blackett of Wylam, on condition that he changed his name to Blackett-Ord.