William Knight (December 7, 1843 – January 13, 1941) was a businessman from Bayfield, Wisconsin, involved at one time or another as a merchant, in lumbering, banking, selling real estate, and orchardist, who served one term as a Republican member of the Wisconsin State Assembly.
At that time, he switched to academies in Camden and then Dover, followed by two years at the Hudson River Institute in Claverack, New York.
After leaving school, he moved to Detroit, where he worked as a clerk at a mustering and disbursement office of the United States government.
He left there in 1869, coming to Bayfield, where he settled (except for a year in Ashland, spending most of the ensuing decades in the banking[2] and lumbering trades.
In his home county of Bayfield (now its own district), he was succeeded by Hubert Peavey, a self-described Progressive Republican.