Frank Lester Greene Papers

Frank Lester Greene, son of Lester Bruce and Mary Elizabeth Greene, was born in St. Albans, Vermont in 1870. When he was three, the family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where his father became secretary and treasurer of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. The family returned to St. Albans when Lester became fatally ill with a disease which lingered on for nine years. Young Frank stayed in school until 1883 when the needs of the family demanded that he take a job as messenger with the Central Vermont Railway. A year later he became stenographer in the freight department, and in 1887 he was advanced to chief clerk. It was at this time that he began to submit articles to New England newspapers, and to study law as an avocation. In 1891, Greene was hired as a local reporter for the St. Albans Messenger. In 1892, after the reorganization of the company, he became assistant editor, and in 1899 he became editor. The collection contains a scrapbook of newspaper articles written by Greene during a six months tour of Europe in 1893-1894. He also contributed a "Vermont Letter" to The Boston Globe's Sunday Edition.

In the 1890's Greene became active in politics. He organized and became president of a Republican First Voters Club, became secretary of the Young Men's Republican Club of Vermont, and served as secretary of the St. Albans Board of Trade, 1896-1907. He was married to Jessie Richardson in 1895. Two years later, Captain Greene led a unit of the Vermont National Guard in the celebration of Queen Victoria's Jubilee in Montreal. In 1898 he organized a company of volunteers to fight in the Spanish-American War, and served for a time as adjutant general before he was stricken with typhoid.

After the war, Greene served as president of the Vermont Press Association, 1904-1905. Between 1906 and 1908 he accepted a number of gubernatorial appointments to commissions, and served as a delegate-at-large to the Republican National Convention (1908), committee chairman at the Republican State Convention (1910), and chairman of the Republican State Convention (1914). Greene was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1912, and served on the Committee on Military Affairs until 1923 when he was elected senator. In 1924 he was accidentally shot in a cross fire in Washington, and never fully recovered from the shock. He died in December 1930, and was survived by his wife, his three children, Richardson, Dorothy and Stuart, and his mother Mary E. Greene.