A native of St. Albans, Vermont, he was educated in St. Albans and Cleveland, Ohio, and began working as a teenager to help support his family after his father became disabled. He became a clerk for the Central Vermont Railway, and later became a journalist and editor of the "St. Albans Messenger" newspaper. Greene also served in the militia; enlisting as a private, by the time of the Spanish–American War he was a company commander with the rank of captain. He later served on the military staff of Governor Edward Curtis Smith, with the rank of colonel; Smith had been his employer at the Central Vermont Railway and "St. Albans Messenger".