[3] The family moved first to Eshton and then Edenfield, where the young Greenhalge (who would change the spelling of his name as an adult) attended private school.

[4] In 1855 the family immigrated to Lowell, Massachusetts, where the father had been offered a job heading the printing department of the Merrimack Manufacturing Company.

He left Harvard after three years because his father died, the family finances having suffered a setback due mill closures caused by the American Civil War.

He was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1884 and a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1885 but was unsuccessful in his bid for reelection.

He was opposed for the Republican nomination by Albert E. Pillsbury, a member of the reform-oriented Mugwump wing of the party.

Pillsbury was opposed by the powerful Senator-elect Henry Cabot Lodge, and Greenhalge was chosen as a relatively safe candidate against the Democrat John E. Russell.

Greenhalge fell ill with kidney disease early into his third term as governor, and died in office on March 5, 1896;[12] businesses and schools closed in his honor.

At his funeral Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and Harvard President Charles William Eliot served as pallbearers; he is buried in Lowell Cemetery.