Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 3.djvu/351

 PROMINENT PERSONS

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ter of Joseph Miller, a prominent merchant of Fort Smith, Arkansas, who was robbed and murdered on board a Mississippi river steamboat in 1850. He died at Fort Smith, Arkansas, February 9, 1903.

Ambler, James Markham, son of Dr. Richard Gary Ambler and Susan Marshall, his wife, was born in Fauquier county, Vir- ginia, December 30, 1848. Attended Wash- ington College in 1865-67 and graduated in medicine at the University of Maryland in March, 1869; entered the United States naval service, as assistant surgeon, April i, 1874; served in the naval hospital at Nor- folk, and volunteered for duty on the Jca)i- ncttc, sent to the northern seas in 1881. He might have saved himself by leaving his companions, but this he would not do. He died in the cause of science and humanity. He and his companions perished on the banks of the Lena river about October 30, 1 88 1, in the retreat of Capt De Long's com- pany from the steamer. He appears to have been the last to die. His frozen body was recovered, and in February, 1884, interred at Leed's church. His fellow surgeons placed in the church a brass tablet to his memory and the professors, officers and students of Washington and Lee LTniver- sity, unveiled a tablet there also in his honor, June, 1885.

Green, William, descended from Robert Green, who emigrated with his uncle Wil- liam DufT, a Quaker, to Virginia in 1710, was a son of John Williams Green, judge of the Virginia supreme court of appeal.-, and was born at Fredericksburg, November 10. 1806. He was self taught, with the ex- ception of brief terms at the school of Mr. Goolrick, in Fredericksburg, and Mr. John

Lewis, a famous teacher in Spotsylvania county. Nevertheless, by intense applica- tion, aided by the great powers of his mind, he became the most learned lawyer and scholar in Virginia. For six months at a lime he would speak scarcely a word to any human being, absorbed entirely with his books. He came to the bar in his twenty- first year and practiced in Culpeper and the surrounding counties, and soon acquired a reputation for profound knowledge of the law. In 1855 he removed to Richmond, and practiced with great success. His most notable forensic effort was made in the case of ]\Ioon vs. Stone, involving the operation of the famous rule in Shelly's case. The supreme court was so impressed with it that they directed its publication in their reports, it fills one hundred and twenty-seven pages of the nineteenth volume of "Grattan's Re- ports." It elicited high praise from several of the judges of the English courts. Pjaron Bramwell declared that '"it showed a pro- digious amount of industry and well dircrted upon very difficult questions." Mr. J W. Wallace inscribed his work "The Reports" to him, and wrote of Mr. Green that "his knowledge of law books exceeded that of all the men I have ever known in England f)r .'\merica." He was as familiar with the ancient legal works as he was with the mod- ern. His love of literary study was as great as his love of the law. He was an accom- plished Greek and Latin scholar and a close student of history. During the war he filled n post in the Confederate treasury depnrt- ment. After the war he was apponited to succeed Judge Luons on the bench of the "court of conciliation" extemporized by n,ilitary authority while the life of the state was in a condition of suspended animation.