Justin Winsor (January 2, 1831October 22, 1897) was an American writer, librarian, and historian. His historical work had strong bibliographical and cartographical elements. He was an authority on the early history of North America and was elected the first president of the American Library Association as well as the third president of the American Historical Association. Background and education Winsor was born in Boston, Massachusetts, son of Nathaniel Winsor III (1806 – c. 1890) and Ann Thomas Howland Winsor (1809–1893). His father was a shipping merchant who had established the "Winsor Line", one of the first regular lines of clipperships between Boston and San Francisco. Shortly before his birth, his parents had recently moved to Boston from Duxbury, Massachusetts where the Winsor family had been involved in shipbuilding for generations. His grandfather's home, the Nathaniel Winsor, Jr. House, is now the headquarters of the Duxbury Rural and Historical Society. Justin Winsor graduated from the Boston Latin School. He entered Harvard, but left in his senior year and never finished his education at the university. Around this time he planned an memoir of Garrick and his Contemporaries, of which the manuscript and notes are in the Harvard Library. He then studied in Paris and Heidelberg. Winsor would return to Harvard to complete his studies in 1868. He would go on to complete L.L. D. at the University of Michigan in 1887. Family In 1855, Winsor married Caroline Tufts Barker (1830–1911), daughter of Ebenezer and Sally Fuller Barker of Charlestown, Massachusetts. They had two children, Mary (born 1860) who died in infancy, and Constance (c. 1861 – 1895). Writer and editor Justin Winsor published his first book, A History of the Town of Duxbury (1849), during his first year at Harvard. He contributed to many periodicals, and, in addition to editing many smaller works, he edited some of the most important historical works of the 19th century, among them: Reader's Handbook of American History (1879), The Memorial History of Boston (4 vols., 1880–1881) and the Narrative and Critical History of America (8 vols., 1884–1889). The latter was a standard history reference for decades. Librarian Boston Public Library Winsor was one of the creators of the librarian profession, a strong proponent of the ability of libraries to uplift, and a leader in the effort to make libraries the center of universities. He started his library career as a trustee (1867–1868), then superintendent (1868–1877)