People Australia

Samuel Green, n.d.

Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 22 April 1913, p 9

Sydney Temple Green (1867-1945) stonemason, quarry-master and Labor political candidate

Birth: 21 November 1866 in Caloola, Bathurst, New South Wales, son of English-born Thomas Augustus Green (1837-1927), shepherd, and Lydia, née Chipperfield (1837-1919), born in Clavering, Essex, England. Marriages: (1) 1895 at Marrickville, Sydney, to native-born Ellen Crowfoot (1868-1925). They had two daughters. (2) 24 July 1926 at St Nicholas Church, Coogee, Sydney, Sydney, to native-born Catherine Elizabeth Russell, née Diggs, a widow with three children. Death: 19 July 1945 in his home at Knox Street, Clovelly, NSW. Religion: Anglican. 

• First assisted his father in station life in various parts of the Lachlan district. Came to Sydney in the 1880s and worked in the brickyards near Marrickville. When the Illawarra railway line was being constructed, he, his father and his brother Thomas Eli (1863-1928) opened quarries first at Woolli and later at Annandale. In 1901 they started a large quarry at Randwick. Although the firm was a large employer, the brothers, like their father, always supported the Labor movement.
• In the 1890s Syd was a member of the Balmain Political Labor League [PLL], the first branch of what was to become the Australian Labor Party. For five years he was a member of Labor’s central executive. In June 1910 he was a nominee for selection of a Labor candidate for the State seat of Waverley. That year, with Richard Sleath, he was one of the founders of a PLL at Charing Cross, in the Randwick electorate. His brother Eli was president of the Randwick PLL.
• On several occasions he represented the Annandale leagues at Labor’s annual conferences and was in 1911 was president of the Little Coogee PLL. At a municipal election in 1912 was narrowly defeated by Labor candidate for East [Coogee] ward in Randwick municipal council elections. In 1912 he was treasurer of the NSW Labor League Literary and Debating Association.
• Preselected for the Randwick seat in State Legislative Assembly in 1912 Green withdrew when chosen to contest the seat of Wentworth for Labor in the Federal House of Representatives and was comfortably defeated by Willie Kelly in the May 1913 Federal election.
• Green remained active in ALP, contesting municipal election for Randwick in 1914, continued his association with the Little Coogee branch of the ALP and opposed conscription in 1916 and 1917.
• In the 1920s he was president of the Clovelly Labor League and the Eastern Suburbs Electorate Council.
• From 1936 to 1945 he was a member of the Anglican synod.

Sources
Sue Tracey, Catherine Green and Ellen Webster – the first women in the NSW Legislative Council, Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, The Hummer (Sydney), vol. 3 no. 1: https://www.labourhistory.org.au/hummer/vol-3-no-1/catherine-green/