Manley C. Green was born in Sardinia, NY on October 5, 1843. He graduated from Buffalo High School and attended Williams College, though he received no degree. He read law in the offices of Rowen & Rogers and was admitted to the bar in Rochester on April 10, 1874. He practiced law in partnership in Buffalo until his election to the State Supreme Court for the Eighth District seventeen years later. He presided as a trial judge from 1892 until his appointment as an Associate Justice of the Appellate Division for the Fourth Department in 1896. He was a member of this Court at the time of his death in Buffalo on October 10, 1898.