Oliver Wendell Holmes, the son of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, the poet
and essayist, was born at Boston, March 8, 1841. He graduated from
Harvard in 1861, and from the Harvard law school in 1866. During the
Civil war he served three years with the Massachusetts volunteers,
and was wounded in the breast in the battle of Balls Bluff, and again
wounded at the battle of Antietam. At the close of the war he engaged
in the practice of law in Boston, and was editor of the Law Review from
1870 to 1873. In 1882 he became professor at the Harvard law school.
In the same year he was made assistant justice in the Supreme judicial
court, Massachusetts, and on August 2, 1899, he was made chief justice
of the same court.