Adam Green was born in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, in the year 1811. He was the son of John Green, a farmer, and his boyhood was passed in rural pursuits. He was an ambitious and enterprising lad and when he arrived at man's estate and began casting about for a vocation he was not long in determining that railroad building, then comparatively in its infancy, would develop into a great business. He was satisfied that steam was the coming motive power, and the revolution which it was to work in the transportation affairs of the world was already beginning to be shadowed forth. So he was not long in choosing an occupation and took up contracting as a pursuit, being for many years one of the prominent railroad builders and contractors of the country.
He was a contractor on the Madison & Indianapolis Railroad, and it was while engaged on this work that he met at Madison, Indiana, the lady who was afterward to become his wife. He was married September 29, 1840, to Miss Emeline Ledgerwood, an estimable young lady.
After the completion of the Madison & Indiana Railroad, Mr. Green became general superintendent of the road and continued as such for some years, when he determined to give up railroading, which he did, and for two or three years was engaged in the grocery business at Madison. In 1855 he moved to Davenport, Iowa, where he engaged in the milling business, which he conducted very successfully and profitably until during the war, when his mill was burned. For some time after this he was interested in the flour and feed business, in fact he retained his interest in that business to the time of his death.
Mr. Green, while in no sense a public man, was one of the substantial and prominent business men of Davenport. He was public-spirited and progressive in his ideas, and always ready with his means or counsel to help forward any worthy object. He was one of the stockholders of the First National Bank, and at one time a director of the same.
BIOGRAPHIES