He was born in Xenia, Ohio, and graduated from The Ohio State University in 1910. While a student at Ohio State, he was initiated into the Ohio Zeta chapter of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity. He took his Ph.D. in history at Columbia University, where he was influenced by both Herbert L. Osgood and Charles A. Beard. He taught at Ohio State and the University of Iowa before he joined the faculty of Harvard University as a professor of history in 1924, succeeded Frederick Jackson Turner and taught at Harvard until 1954. Harvard's Schlesinger Library in women's history is named after him and his wife, Elizabeth, a noted feminist. He became an editor of the "New England Quarterly" in 1928.