Background
Green, Wharton Jackson was born on February 28, 1831 in Saint Marks, Florida, United States. Son of Thomas Jefferson and Sarah Angelina (Wharton) Green.
Green, Wharton Jackson was born on February 28, 1831 in Saint Marks, Florida, United States. Son of Thomas Jefferson and Sarah Angelina (Wharton) Green.
He attended Georgetown College, Lovejoy’s Academy in Raleigh, North Carolina, and the United States Military Academy, West Point, New York but dropped out. He then studied law at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville and at Cumberland University, Lebanon, Tennessee.
Born in Saint Marks, Florida, Green was instructed by private tutors. He was admitted to the bar in 1854 and commenced practice in Washington, District of Columbia before engaging in agricultural pursuits in Warren County, North Carolina, in 1859. During the Civil War, Green enlisted in the Confederate service in 1861 and rose through the ranks to lieutenant colonel of the Second North Carolina Battalion.
Afterward, he served on Brigadier General Junius Daniel’s staff
Green was wounded and taken prisoner at the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863. He spent the rest of the war in the Johnson"s Island prisoner-of-war camp.
After the war, he settled at “Tokay Vineyard,” near Fayetteville, North Carolina, and became interested in viticulture. He was a delegate to the Democratic National Conventions in 1868, 1872, 1876, and 1888.
Green was the first president of the Society of Confederate Soldiers and Sailors in North Carolina.
Entering politics, he was elected as a Democrat to the Forty-eighth and Forty-ninth Congresses (March 4, 1883 – March 3, 1887). He was an unsuccessful candidate for renomination in 1886 and retired from public service. He then devoted his time to the cultivation of his vineyard and to literary pursuits.
He wrote his autobiography, Recollections and Reflections: An auto of Half a Century and More, in 1906.
Wharton Green died at “Tokay,” near Fayetteville on August 6, 1910. He was buried in the town"s Cross Creek Cemetery.
One of Green"s daughters, Sarah, married wealthy industrialist Pembroke Jones of Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1884. With the help of their close friend, art collector and railroad president Henry Walters, they created a lifestyle some claim made them models for the saying, "Keeping up with the Joneses." They maintained luxurious residences in Newport and New York City.
The garden estate Sarah Green Jones created in Wilmington still exists and is known as Airlie Gardens.
(1906 first edition Edwards and Broughton. Chapters on his...)
Member 48th and 49th Congresses (1883-1887).
Married Esther Sargent Ellery, May 4, 1858. Married second, Mistress.