28 Feb. 1831–6 Aug. 1910
In 1846, he entered Georgetown College as a boarding student. From 1847 to 1848 he attended the classical and English academy in Raleigh, N.C., operated by J. M. Lovejoy; and in 1849, Stephen M. Weld's select preparatory school near Boston, Mass. Green's appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point was approved simultaneously with the admission of California as a state (September 1850), at which time his father's address was given as Sacramento. After three years at West Point, where the alumni records list him as Jackson Wharton Green, he studied law at the University of Virginia (where he was a member of the Jefferson Literary Society) and at the newly established Cumberland University at Lebanon, Tenn. On admission to the bar in 1854, he began practicing in Washington, D.C.; he was admitted to practice in the United States Supreme Court, and became a junior partner with the law firm of Robert J. Walker (former secretary of the Treasury) and Louis Janin.
After Green's marriage—at Montmorenci, Warren County, on 4 May 1858—to Esther Sergeant Ellery, the only child of his stepmother, he and his bride spent over a year traveling in Europe and Africa. Upon their return, they went to their country place in Jamaica Plain near Boston where their oldest child, Sarah Wharton, was born on 19 July 1859. When they settled at Esmeralda, their North Carolina home, with their one-month-old baby, Green engaged in agricultural pursuits and bred racehorses. Sarah Wharton Green later married Pembroke Jones and, secondly, Henry Walters, both of Wilmington. Their second daughter, Adeline Caroline, never married and their youngest daughter, Mable Ellery, married George Blow Elliott, also of Wilmington. Their only son died in infancy.
Returning to Esmeralda, Green renewed his interest in agriculture and became involved in politics. He was the first president of the Society of Confederate Soldiers and Sailors in North Carolina, and was a delegate to the Democratic National conventions in 1868, 1872, 1876, and 1888. In 1879, he bought the 469 acres of Tokay Vineyard near Fayetteville and moved there the next year, becoming deeply interested in viticulture. His wife did not live long in their new home, dying on 15 June 1883. The same year he was elected to represent the old Third North Carolina district in the Forty-eighth Congress. During that session two of his daughters lived with him at the hotel in Washington. On his reelection to the Forty-ninth Congress, Green rented a house in Washington where his oldest daughter, then Mrs. Pembroke Jones, kept house for her father and sisters. On 29 Oct. 1888, the year after completing his two terms in Congress, he married, at Tokay, Mrs. Adeline Currier Davis, widow of Judge David Davis and first cousin of his previous wife. There were no children by this marriage. Thereafter Green devoted his energies to the cultivation of his vineyard and to literary pursuits. During this time he published his Recollections and Reflections. He died at Tokay Vineyard and was buried in Cross Creek Cemetery, Fayetteville.
