William Ramsay was born on Christmas Day 1846 in Monroe County, Iowa.[1] The next year the family traveled the Oregon Trail and settled near the town of Newberg in Oregon Country.[1] Arriving in the fall of 1847, William's parents Susan Shuck (d. 1898) and David Ramsey (d. 1891) homesteaded on the same site as Ewing Young's former mill.[2] William was the youngest of five children in the family when they moved to Oregon, although his parents later had nine more children.[2] He was schooled in the local public schools before attending and graduating from McMinnville College.[2] William read law in Yamhill County and passed the bar, becoming a lawyer in 1868.[1] Two years later he married Mahala A. Harris with whom he fathered four children.[1]
On June 3, 1913, Oregon GovernorOswald West appointed Ramsey and fellow former Willamette Law dean Charles L. McNary to the state supreme court bench when the court expanded from five to seven justices.[4][5] Ramsey, a Democrat, ran for re-election in 1914, but lost to Lawrence T. Harris.[5][6] Both McNary and Ramsey left the court at the end of the term on January 4, 1915.[5]
Family
William's son Frederick served as a sergeant in the US Marine Corps aboard the Battleship Oregon during the Spanish–American War.[2] After his first wife died William married Julia A. Snyder in 1896, and they had one daughter.[1][2] William Marion Ramsey died on September 15, 1937, at the age of 91 and was buried in McMinnville at a funeral attended by several Oregon Supreme Court justices including Henry J. Bean, John O. Bailey, John L. Rand, and Percy R. Kelly.[2]
