Lowell (James Russell) is born in Cambridge.

The son of Rev. Charles Russell and Harriet (Spence) Lowell, James Russell Lowell grows up at 51 Chestnut Street, graduates from Harvard College and Harvard Law School, and initially practices law. An abolitionist, writer, poet and editor, he succeeds Longfellow as professor of modern languages and belles-lettres at Harvard in 1844, becomes the first editor of The Atlantic Monthly in 1857,* and, with Charles Eliot Norton, edits the North American Review in 1864. He serves as U.S. minister to Spain (1877-80) and England (1880-85), during which time he becomes godfather to Virginia Woolf in 1882. Lowell dies in Cambridge on August 12, 1891, and is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery.