William R. Green

Who was William R. Green?

William Raymond Green was a longtime Republican U.S. Representative from Iowa's 9th congressional district, and chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, until he resigned to accept appointment as an associate judge on the United States Court of Claims.

Born in Colchester, Connecticut, Green attended the public schools in Malden, Illinois, and Princeton High School in Princeton, Illinois. He was graduated from Oberlin College at Oberlin, Ohio, in 1879. Rather than graduating from a law school, he studied law with the firm McCoy and Pratt. He was admitted to the bar in 1882 and commenced practice in Dow City, Iowa. Two years later, he moved his office to Audubon, Iowa. He served as judge of the district court in the fifteenth judicial district of Iowa from 1894 until 1911, when he resigned to run in a special election for Congress. In 1911, Representative Walter I. Smith of Iowa's 9th congressional district resigned, forcing a special election for his permanent replacement. Green ran as a Republican, and was sworn in on June 5, 1911 as a member of the Sixty-second Congress.