The names of Charles Hargen and "Buffalo" Bill Cody are names synonymous with the famous Pony Express of yesteryear. They were two of the 183 men who rode in the now legendary mail system of the past. However you hardly hear of the mastermind behind the program. William H. Russell was a St. Joseph, Missouri businessman who dreamed of the possibilities of a quick and safe way to get information to America's west coast. The service began in 1860 and stretched a distance of 1966 miles from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California. Most of the men who rode were said to be "young, skinny, fellows." Each rode with mailbags, and were protected by their Bibles, their rifles, and their revolvers. They traveled about 250 miles a day, and taking an average of ten days to travel the distance. The service only lasted 19 months, being replaced by the much quicker telegraph service.

Though best known for his connection to the Express, Russell was known far and wide for his business entrepenural expertise. This Vermont born businessman was connected with numerous schemes through the years. At his home in Lexington, Missouri, he, along with E.C. McCarty, dispatched the first wagon train ever to carry civilian cargo from Westport Landing to Santa Fe in 1847. The success was so great that he and McCarty repeated it again in 1848. The next year he, along with partner, William B. Waddell, added a contract with the Army to move supplies in the west with the signing of a $150,000 performance bond. So, in addition to being a mail carrier, he was one of the first cargo transporter as well, a veritable ancestor of the United Parcel Service/Federal Express concept. But cargo and mail were not the only "irons in the fire" attributed to W.H. Russell. Over the years Russell served as a president of an insurance company and a road-building company. He served as a director of two local railroads, as well a branch of the Bank Of Missouri.

Russell, in addition to being a business man, was a Christian. He married Harriet Eliot Warder, the daughter of Kentucky Baptist minister, John Warder. The Warder family was connected with early reform among the Baptist. John's younger brother, Walter Warder, was most noted as having worked with Jeremiah Vardeman, Jacob Creath, Jr., and "Raccoon" John Smith in the late 1820s.

In his sixtieth year, he was living with his son, John W., in Palmyra, Missouri. There is where he died September 10, 1872. He was buried in the Greenwood Cemetery.