Wm. Wirt Henry was the grandson of Patrick Henry (1736-1799). He was a Virginia lawyer, a historian and a writer. Wm. W. Henry wrote a well respected 3 volume biography on his famous grandfather in 1891. He served in the Virginia House of Delegates and the Virginia Senate. Mr. Henry was the President of the Virginia Bar Association and the American Historical Association. William W. Henry served briefly in the Staunton Hill Artillery in the Civil War. He was born in Charlotte County, the son of John Henry (II) the son of Patrick Henry (through his second wife Dorothea Dandridge Henry) and Elvira McClelland.

from the book the Cabells and Their Kin:
William Wirf Henry, born February 14, 1831, at
" Red Hill," Charlotte County, Va educated at the University of Virginia, where he took the degree of M. A.
admitted to the bar in 1853, in C. S. A. service, was commonwealth attorney for Charlotte County; removed to
Richmond in 1873, and represented that city in the legislature from 1877 to 1883. He was the orator of the Philadelphia Centennial in 1876, and of the centennial celebration of the laying of the corner-stone of the Capitol at Washington in 1893. He was president of the American Historical Association in 1891 was for many years president of the Virginia Historical Society, and is now president of the Virginia Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, and commissioner from Virginia in the Peabody Board of Education. He has written, among other papers, "The Truth Concerning' George Rodgers Clark, "The
Rescue of Captain Smith by Pocahontas," "Patrick Henry
the Earliest Advocate of American Independence;" a paper
on Sir Walter Raleigh, and many on the earlier stages of
the growth of Virginia; and has recently published the
"Life, Correspondence, and Speeches of Patrick Henry."

Hon. William Wirt Henry married, November 8,
1854, Miss Lucy Gray Marshall, of Charlotte County, Va.,
State Regent for Virginia of the Virginia Society of the
Daughters of the American Revolution ; member of the advisory board of the A. P. V. A., of " The Society of the
Colonial Dames " in Virginia, etc. Issue,
i. Elizabeth Watkins Henry, vice-president of "The Colonial Dames " in Virginia, and also an official of several other patriotic societies m., October 9, 1879, Hon. James Lyons (eldest son of the late Judge William H. Lyons), member of the House of Delegates from Richmond, 1879-1880 and 1881-1882 Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, 1885-1889 one of the ruling elders of the Second Presbyterian Church of Richmond, etc. son
of Judge William Henry Lyons.