Bancroft (George) is born in Worcester.

The son of a Unitarian minister and his wife, George Bancroft graduates from Harvard College, studies in Germany, returns to the U.S. to teach at Harvard and other schools, and moves to Boston in 1838 after being named Customs Collector for the Port of Boston. Bancroft becomes known as the “Father of American History.” He is named Secretary of the Navy in 1845, U.S. minister to Great Britain in 1846 and to Prussia in 1867. Returning to the U.S., he moves to Washington, D.C., in 1874 and dies there on January 17, 1891.