Condition as seen.  William Green was a famous attorney in Culpeper VA during the mid 1800's.  

William Green lawyer  William Green was an American lawyer.

Background

William Green traced his descent from William Green, a member of the body-guard of King William III, whose son, Robert, emigrated to Virginia about 1712. His grandson, Col. John Williams Green, rose to eminence as chancellor and judge of the Virginia court of appeals, married Mary Brown, December 24, 1805, and resided at Fredericksburg, where their eldest son, William, was born on November 10, 1806.

Education

William attended private schools in Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania County, but his education was principally received at the hands of his father, who, it is credibly alleged, relearned Greek in order to teach it to his son. He also studied law with his father.

Career

William was admitted to the bar in 1827 before he was twenty-one years old. He then removed to Culpeper County where he commenced practise. In 1829, when his practise was yet small, he added to his income by engaging in literary work, contributing articles on a variety of subjects to the Culpeper Gazette and the Southern Literary Messenger, but he soon became favorably known by reason of his steady application to business and the scrupulous care with which he prepared his cases. As a result he attracted the major part of the legal work within the counties of Rappahannock, Orange, Louisa, and Culpeper, which comprised his circuit, giving him an opportunity to display that profound knowledge of the law which later placed him indisputably at the head of the Virginia bar.  From early youth Green had been systematic in his studies, ranging through all branches of the law, and owing to his retentive memory, assisted by his invariable practise of daily annotating his text-books and reports, he was always prepared for any point which might unexpectedly arise in the course of a trial or argument. In consequence of this, he was frequently retained in cases before the court of appeals, and his appellate practise increased to such an extent that in 1855 he removed to Richmond. From that time forward until his death, he was admittedly facile princeps at the Virginia bar. He was retained on behalf of John Brown, after the latter’s conviction for treason in 1859, to apply to the supreme court of appeals for a writ of error, and, though the writ was refused, his argument displayed acquaintance with all the learning bearing upon the law of treason, ancient and modern.  His finest effort, however, was made in a case which was devoid of all popular appeal, inasmuch as it involved an abstruse point of real property law; namely, whether a devisee took by purchase or as heir under the operation of the rule in Shelley’s case. The court was so impressed by his argument that it was ordered to be printed in full in the Report, where it occupied 127 pages. It also received unstinted praise in English legal circles.  Green never participated actively in public affairs, but, actuated by a strong sense of duty, served the Confederate government during the Civil War in the Department of the Treasury, and, subsequently, officiated as a judge of the court of conciliation for the city of Richmond. In 1870 he was appointed professor of law at Richmond College and as such conducted the first law classes held there, but pressure of counsel work soon compelled him to resign. Thenceforward he confined himself to his law practise, employing his leisure in writing articles on professional topics and in the preparation of material for projected works on legal, historical, and kindred subjects.  

His published writings, with the exception of The Genesis of Certain Counties in Virginia from Cities and Towns of the Same Name, and an essay on “Lapse, Joint Tenants and Tenants in Common, ” which appeared as an appendix to B. Minor’s edition (1852) of Wythe’s Decisions, consist entirely of articles contributed to various periodicals, chiefly legal, the most remarkable of which was that on "Stare Decisis’’ in the American Law Review, September 1880.

Among his papers at his death were found the incomplete manuscript of a profound work on practise, to which he had devoted twenty years of unremitting labor, an extensive collection of notes for a projected “History of Executive, Legislative and Judicial Administration in Virginia, ” and material for new editions of the works of Lord Bolingbroke and Butler’s work on nisi prius.

Achievements

William Green has been listed as a reputable lawyer by Marquis Who's Who.

Personality

Armistead Gordon says that he was considered a “living encyclopaedia of unusual knowledge, ” but points out that he has been criticized as possessing no creative faculty or power of original thought.

Connections