Ticknor (George) is born in Boston.

The son of Elisha and Elizabeth (Billings) Ticknor, George Ticknor graduates from Dartmouth College, briefly practices law, studies in Germany, and returns to Boston to become the first professor of modern languages at Harvard in 1819. He marries Anna Eliot in 1821, moves to 9 Park Street in 1830, and there amasses a 14,000-volume library, said to be the largest private library in the U.S. at the time. He becomes an historian and champions public learning in Boston. Barrett Wendell later writes, “He made a deeper impression on intellectual life in Boston than anybody else.” Ticknor dies in Boston on January 26, 1871.