Background
Greenway was born on July 6, 1872, in Huntsville, Alabama, the second of the five children of Dr. Gilbert Christian and Alice (White) Greenway.
military officer railroad executive Soldier
Greenway was born on July 6, 1872, in Huntsville, Alabama, the second of the five children of Dr. Gilbert Christian and Alice (White) Greenway.
Greenway attended the Huntsville public schools, Episcopal High School, Alexandria, Virginia, the University of Virginia, 1890-1891, and Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, 1891-1892. He then entered Sheffield Scientific School, Yale University, where he was graduated with the degree of Ph. B. in 1895. At Yale, Greenway was famous as an athlete and was president of his class.
Later in 1895 Greenway went to work in the Duquesne furnaces of the Carnegie Steel Company, first as machinist's helper and later as foreman. In 1898 he volunteered for service in the Spanish-American War as a private in the Roosevelt Rough Riders. He was advanced to second lieutenant, was soon promoted first lieutenant, and for gallantry in action at San Juan Hill received a silver star citation and was recommended to Congress by Roosevelt for a brevet captaincy. He was mustered out of the army in September 1898 and shortly thereafter went to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he entered the brokerage firm of J. L. D. Speer & Company, representing them on the Pittsburgh Stock Exchange until January 1901. In December 1901 Greenway went to Ishpeming, Michigan, as assistant superintendent of the Marquette range of mines for the United States Steel Corporation. From 1905 to 1910 he was general superintendent for the Oliver Mining Company on the western Mesaba range with headquarters at Bovey and later at Coleraine, Minnesota. He left in the latter year to become general manager of the Calumet & Arizona Copper Company at Bisbee and Warren, Arizona. In 1915 he became general manager also of the New Cornelia Copper Company at Ajo, Arizona, a town which he helped to build and which became his home. His other connections included the 85 Mining Company, the Gadsden Copper Company, the Superior & Pittsburgh Copper Company, and the Tucson, Cornelia & Gila Bend Railway Company. When the United States entered the First World War. Greenway volunteered for service and was commissioned major of engineers on October 15, 1917. He served with the 1st and 26th Divisions in France and was promoted lieutenant-colonel of the 101st Infantry. He took part in actions at Cantigny, Château-Thierry, St. -Mihiel, and in the Argonne. Toward the end of the war he was gassed and was invalided home in January 1919. In the same year he was appointed colonel of infantry, Officers Reserve Corps, and in 1922 was promoted brigadier-general. Following his war service he resumed his mining activities in Arizona, adding to his other responsibilities those of managing director and vice-president of the Ahumada Lead Company of Chihuahua, Mexico. Greenway was at the height of his career when he died suddenly on January 19, 1926, in New York City, of a cardiac embolus following an operation. He was buried, according to his request, on an eminence on his estate overlooking the town of Ajo. On May 24, 1930, a statue of Greenway, presented by the State of Arizona, and executed by Gutzon Borglum, was unveiled in Statuary Hall, in the Capitol at Washington.
Vice-president of the Ahumada Lead Company
Greenway was by nature chivalric, daring, and magnanimous; aristocratic by birth, yet one of the most democratic of men, he was the friend and intimate alike of employer and employee, and he was loved and honored by all sorts and conditions of men. To an extraordinary degree he was gifted with powers of leadership. He both conceived and executed large undertakings.
On November 4, 1923, Greenway was married to Isabella (Selmes) Ferguson, and they had one child, John Selmes Greenway. Some years after Greenway's death, his widow was chosen to fill the unexpired term of Lewis W. Douglas in the Seventy-third Congress and was duly elected to the Seventy-fourth Congress, serving from 1933 to 1937.