HON. WILLIAM RAYMOND GREEN.
In the largest and best sense of the term the Hon. William Raymond Green, M. C., is distinctively one of the notable men of his day and generation, and as such his life record is entitled to a conspicuous place in the annals of his county and state. As a citizen he has been public spirited and enterprising. As a friend and neighbor he has combined the qualities of head and heart that have won confidence and commanded respect. As judge of a district court he discharged his duties with signal ability, conscientious care and in such a manner as to win the universal respect and confidence of all who had business in his court. The Hon. William Raymond has been more than successful in his legal career, having a splendid record at the bar and a long tenure on the bench in the fifteenth judicial district. He was a master of his profession, a leader among men distinguished for the high order of their legal talent, his eminent attainments making him an authority on all matters involving a sound knowledge of jurisprudence. He achieved success as a lawyer at an age when most young men are just entering upon their formative period. So successful was he as a judge and jurist that in 1911 the people of the ninth congressional district conferred additional honor upon him, electing him representative in the lower house of the national Congress.
William Raymond Green was born in Colchester, Connecticut in 1856, the son of Timothy F. and Maria (Raymond) Green, of old New England stock. James Green, the great-grandfather of the Hon. William Raymond Green served in the Revolutionary army as a captain of a company in the First Connecticut Horse. Mr. Green's parents moved from Connecticut to Illinois when their now distinguished son was a lad and the latter passed his boyhood in the little town of Maiden, Bureau county, Illinois, and was graduated from the high school at Princeton, county seat of that county, when he was eighteen years of age. From the high school he went to Oberlin College, at Oberlin, Ohio, working his way through that institution by manual labor and by teaching school in the winters, and was graduated from the classical course of Oberlin College in 1879. Thus armed with a diploma he was engaged as principal of the schools at Neponset, Illinois, where he remained two years. During his vacations he had studied law and the following year completed his law course in the office of McCoy, Pratt & McCoy at Chicago. In 1881 he was admitted to the bar at Ottawa, Illinois, and in that same year commenced the practice of law at Dow City, Iowa, where he remained for two and one-half years, moving thence to Council Bluffs, where he remained until 1885, in which year he came to this county, locating at Audubon, where he formed a co-partnership with John A. Nash and B. S. Phelps under the firm name of Nash, Phelps & Green. The firm carried on a law, loan and abstract business, and Mr. Green took charge of the legal department of the business. This partnership continued until 1895, the year in which Mr. Green was elected judge of the fifteenth judicial district of Iowa, to which position he was re-elected four times. In 1911 Judge Green resigned his position on the bench, having been elected in that year representative in Congress for the ninth congressional district of Iowa. To this position he has been re-elected for the third term. Judge Green has made an enviable record as a member of Congress and has been a power in shaping legislation at Washington, being generally recognized as one of the leading members of the Iowa delegation in the national Congress.
In 1887 William Raymond Green was united in marriage to Luella Washington Brown, of Creston, Iowa, to which union two children have been born, William Raymond Green, Jr., and Margaret Thorp Green.
Judge and Mrs. Green reside during a part of the year in Washington and part of the year in Audubon, their old home, and are highly honored and respected by the people, not only of Audubon county, but of the surrounding counties which Judge Green is serving so well in the capacity of legislator and public servant.
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Transcribed from History of Audubon County, Iowa Its People, Industries and Institutions With Biographical Sketches of Representative Citizens and Genealogical Records of Many of the Old Families, by H. F. Andrews, editor, Indianapolis: B. F. Bowen & Company, 1915, pp. 464-466.
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