 Longfellow was born on February 27 , 1807 , to Stephen Longfellow and Zilpah ( Wadsworth ) Longfellow in Portland , Maine , then a district of Massachusetts , and he grew up in what is now known as the Wadsworth @-@ Longfellow House . His father was a lawyer , and his maternal grandfather , Peleg Wadsworth , was a general in the American Revolutionary War and a Member of Congress . He was named after his mother 's brother Henry Wadsworth , a Navy lieutenant who had died three years earlier at the Battle of Tripoli . Longfellow was the second of eight children ; his siblings were Stephen ( 1805 ) , Elizabeth ( 1808 ) , Anne ( 1810 ) , Alexander ( 1814 ) , Mary ( 1816 ) , Ellen ( 1818 ) and Samuel ( 1819 ) . Longfellow was of entirely English ancestry , all of which had been in New England since the early 1600s . 
