Felton was born in West Newbury, Massachusetts. He graduated at Harvard College in 1827, having taught school in the winter vacations of his sophomore and junior years. After teaching in the Livingstone High School of Geneseo, New York, for two years, he became tutor at Harvard in 1829, university professor of Greek in 1832, and Eliot professor of Greek literature in 1834. In 1860 he succeeded James Walker as president of Harvard, which position he held until his death, at Chester, Pennsylvania.
Dr Felton edited many classical texts. His annotations on Wolf's text of the Iliad (1833) are especially valuable. Greece, Ancient and Modern (2 vols., 1867), forty-nine lectures before the Lowell Institute, is scholarly, able and suggestive of the author's personality.
Among his miscellaneous publications are the American edition of Sir William Smith's History of Greece (1855); translations of Menzel's German Literature (1840), of Munk's Metres of the Greeks and Romans (1844), and of Guyot's Earth and Man (1849); and Familiar Letters from Europe (1865).
PresidentFelton was a member of the Massachusetts board of education, and one of the regents of the Smithsonian institution, His literary labors were extended, and he wits one of the most profound and enthusiastic classical scholars in the country.
His brother, Samuel Norse Felton, civil engineer, born in West Newbury, Massachusetts, 17 July 1809, was graduated at Harvard in 1834, studied civil engineering, became superintendent and engineer of the Fitchburg railroad in 1843, and left it in 1851 to become the president of the Philadelphia, Washington, and Baltimore road, where he remained until 1865.
Felton organized and armed a force of trained men, who, while apparently whitewashing the bridges, were in reality a guard that could be summoned instantly.