Early Life and Career
– Born in Guilford, Vermont
– Attended common schools and completed an academic course
– Moved to Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts and engaged in the manufacture of locks
– Appointed Justice of the Peace in 1856 by the Governor of Massachusetts
– Served as captain of Massachusetts Militia in 1857
Civil War
– Enlisted as a private in the Union Army in August 1862
– Commissioned captain of Company E, Fifty-second Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteers, September 12, 1862
– Elected Colonel and Commandant of the 52nd Massachusetts Infantry Regiment on October 23, 1862
– Regiment fought on the flank at the Battle of Fort Bisland and other battles
– Superior was Major General Nathaniel P. Banks
Post-War Life
– Given command of the government steamer named ‘Col. Benedict’ on the lower Mississippi
– Employed in a salt works near New Orleans, Louisiana
– Settled in Rochester, New York in 1867 and resumed the manufacture of locks
– Devoted himself to support General Hancock as the Democratic candidate in the 1880 presidential campaign
– Organized and commanded the Hancock Brigade, a political military organization opposed to the Republicans
Congressional Career
– Elected as a Democrat to the Forty-eighth Congress (March 4, 1883 – March 3, 1885)
– Unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1884 to the Forty-ninth Congress
– Elected to the 52nd United States Congress (March 4, 1891 – March 3, 1893)
– Not a candidate for renomination in 1892
– Served as a member of various boards and commissions
Later Career and Death
– Resumed former business activities until retirement in 1896
– Died at his summer home in the town of Greece, near Charlotte, New York, on August 25, 1906
– Interred in Mount Hope Cemetery, Rochester, New York, alongside his wife Jean Brooks Greenleaf
– Brother-in-law of Linus Yale Jr. of the Yale Lock Company, who was married to his wife’s half-sister
– References: Semi-Centennial History of the City of Rochester, William F. Peck (1884), p. 705-708; Men of Vermont: An Illustrated Biographical History of Vermonters and Sons, p.74-75Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halbert_S._Greenleaf
