William D. Green has for thirty years been one of the substantial business men of Holton and he represents a family that were among the very earliest settlers of Jackson County. Mr. Green was for a long time a merchant but for years had been looked upon as a reliable real estate man in his city.
A native of Jackson County, Kansas, where he was born January 22, 1863, he is a son of Simpson and Matilda (Roach) Green, both of whom were natives of Kentucky. They came to Kansas in the spring of 1857, locating in Straight Creek Township of Jackson County, where Simpson Green acquired 160 acres of land. That was in the territorial days, when Kansas was a hotbed of civil strife, and the family were among the pioneers in the development of that section. With the exception of the ten year period from 1865 to 1875 when they lived in Buchanan County, Missouri, the parents spent the rest of their days in Jackson County, where the mother died in 1891 and the father in 1894. Simpson Green and wife had eight children: K. C., a farmer at Holton; Florence, wife of G. B. Berry, an Oklahoma farmer; Levi, now deceased; Anetta, wife of W. S. Estes, a farmer in Atchison County, Kansas; Sarah, deceased; J. M., in the real estate business at Topeka; and J. A., a farmer in Jackson County, Kansas.
William D. Green spent part of his boyhood in Northwest Missouri, but gained most of his education in the district schools of Jackson County and also had a two years business course in Campbell College, where he graduated in 1887. He at once engaged in business as a hardware and implement dealer, and for seventeen years was connected with that line, since which time he had applied his efforts to real estate. His offices are in his own office building at the corner of Fifth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.
Mr. Green is an active member of the Holton Commercial Club, and resided at 524 Pennsylvania Avenue, where he had a handsome home. Fraternally he is affiliated with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the Knights of Pythias, the Knights and Ladies of Security and the Sons and Daughters of Justice. He is a Presbyterian. July 28, 1895, at Holton, Kansas, Mr. Green married Mary Etta Weaver, daughter of Reuben S. and Mary (Pollock) Weaver. Her father was born in Pennsylvania and her mother in Ohio, and her father served four years in the Union army during the Civil war, with the rank of lieutenant. Mrs. Green is president of Post No. 135, Ladies of the Grand Army, and is patriotic instructor for the state. She is also identified with the suffragist movement. Mrs. Green was born in Westville, Indiana, January 6, 1871. Her father was born in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, February 6, 1828, and died at Holton, Kansas, October 31, 1881. He was a cabinet maker by trade, afterwards became an architect and builder, and after establishing his home at Holton in 1871 did the carpenter and cabinet work on many of the finest residences in the city, including some of the buildings of Campbell College. His service during the war was in Company G of the Fifteenth Indiana Infantry. He was also a thirty-second degree Mason and an Odd Fellow and a member of the Presbyterian Church.