George was born on October 24, 1811 in Bedford County, Virginia, United States. He was the son of Micajah and Sarah (Leftwich) Stone. His grandfather, Micajah, had settled in Virginia before the Revolution. When George was seven years old the family migrated to Lincoln County, Tennessee, where the father became a planter in comfortable circumstances.
The boy was educated in the schools which were available in the local community and studied law in the office of James Fulton at Fayetteville, Tennessee.
Going to Alabama to take his bar examination, he was admitted to the bar in May 1834. He practised in Sylacauga and in Talladega until 1843, when he was appointed judge of the circuit court to fill out an unexpired term.
In December of the same year he was elected by the legislature for the six-year term. In 1849 he resigned to resume his law practice, opening a new office in Hayneville, Alabama.
In 1856 he was elected associate justice of the supreme court of Alabama and was reelected in 1862. During the reconstruction period he was retired from the bench and practised in Montgomery. After the restoration of home rule in the state, he was appointed associate justice by Governor Houston.
He held the office by appointment from 1876 to 1880, when he was elected to it for a term of six years. In 1884 he was appointed chief justice by Governor O'Neal.
From 1886 until his death he held the office by election. When he came to the bench both the law and its administration were in a chaotic state in Alabama. The standards had not been high before the Civil War and the demoralization resulting from war and reconstruction had increased the confusion. Stone set himself to bring some sort of order into the judicial system of the state. He stood for a vigorous administration of criminal law and rigid honesty in the administration of civil law. He aided in the preparation of the Revised Penal Code in 1865 and was able to introduce some improvements into it.
He was not able, however, to win popular support for the reform of either of these conditions during his lifetime.
Stone died in Montgomery in his eighty-third year.
As chief justice for a quarter of a century George Washington Stone handed down more than two thousand decisions and through them materially improved the quality of judicial work. He was an earnest advocate of judicial reform, opposed the separate courts of law and equity which existed in Alabama and the probate courts with their judges untrained in the law.
He had a judicial mind.
He had been three times married: December 16, 1834, to Mary Gillespie of Franklin, Tennessee; September 4, 1849, to Emily Moore of Lowndes County, Alabama; February 8, 1866, to Mary E. (Harrison) Wright of Lowndes County. He was survived by his third wife and several children.
