William Marion Ramsey

William Marion Ramsey
43rd Associate Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court
In office 1913–1915
Appointed by	Oswald West
Preceded by	new position
Succeeded by	Lawrence T. Harris
Personal details
Born	December 25, 1846 Iowa
Died	September 15, 1937(1937-09-15) (aged 90) Oregon
Spouse(s)	Mahala A. Harris Julia A. Snyder

William Marion Ramsay (December 25, 1846 – September 15, 1937) was an American politician and judge in Oregon. He was the 43rd Associate Justice on the Oregon Supreme Court serving from 1913 to 1915. He was also the first dean of Willamette University College of Law and a mayor of Salem, Oregon, and McMinnville, Oregon.

William Ramsay was born on Christmas Day 1846 in Monroe County, Iowa. The next year the family traveled the Oregon Trail and settled near the town of Newberg in Oregon Country. 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. William was the youngest of five children in the family when they moved to Oregon, though his parents would have nine more children. He was schooled in the local public schools before attending and graduating from McMinnville College. William read law in Yamhill County and passed the bar, becoming a lawyer in 1868. Two years later he married Mahala A. Harris with whom he would father four children.

In 1870, William was elected as the county judge for Yamhill County. He then practiced law in Lafayette, Oregon for ten years including for a time as a law partner with Benjamin F. Bonham, the two were partners from 1876 until 1885. From 1883 to 1888 Ramsey served as the first dean for Willamette University College of Law in Salem, Oregon, where he was in charge of a staff of three professors. While in Salem he also served as mayor before moving to east to Pendleton, Oregon, and La Grande, Oregon, (1902–1911) and then settling again in McMinnville, Oregon, where he served two terms as mayor.

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