William was born in Felsberg, Germany on the 3rd of June, 1840, and he emigrated to the US in 1860. The following year, when he was 21, he enlisted in the 30th Regiment Ohio Volunteer Infantry. William was a Corporal in Company I on the 22nd of May, 1863, when he and one hundred and forty-nine others volunteered to make a diversionary charge on a Confederate position in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Their mission was to draw fire away from the main assault and no one was expected to survive, which is why only unmarried men were accepted as volunteers. It was William's actions during this charge that would earn him the Medal of Honor. The citation reads:

Gallantry in the charge of the "volunteer storming party”.

Eighty-five percent of the storming party were killed in this assault and did not make it back to Union lines. This was either due to being killed immediately or captured. William was captured but was later exchanged and went on to serve in the 1864 Atlanta Campaign, the March to the Sea, and the push through the Carolinas in March and April of 1865.

He was mustered out of service on the 13th of August, 1865 in Little Rock, Arkansas, and moved to Canton, Ohio. William became the Postmaster of Canton for four years and thirty-one years after his actions in Vicksburg, he received his Medal of Honor on the 10th of July, 1894. He and nine other members of the 30th Regiment, fifty-three in total, received the Medal for that storming party. William was married to Katherine Eicher and they had four sons and one daughter and he had retired to Trenton, New Jersey. William J Archinal died on the 10th of May, 1919, at the age of 78, and is buried in the Riverview Cemetery in Trenton, New Jersey: Section W, Lot 126.