Born in Ipswich, Massachusetts,[1][2] he attended Dummer Academy and graduated from Amherst College in 1832, and from Harvard Law School in 1836.
[2] An anecdote arising from his time there was published in newspapers around the country: The late Judge Otis Phillips Lord, of Massachusetts, is said to have made but one direct mistake on a question of law while on the bench, and that was of a statute which had just been amended.
He lost to incumbent Republican Benjamin Butler, but he received more votes than independent candidate Richard Henry Dana Jr.[4] In 1875 Governor William A. Gaston appointed Lord to the Supreme bench.
[8] Dickinson found a kindred soul in Lord, especially in terms of shared literary interests; the few letters which survived contain multiple quotations of Shakespeare's work, including the plays Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet and King Lear.
[12] In 1882, following the death of Dickinson's mother, Lord suggested that they marry, but she declined, apparently so as not to burden him with the possibility of her repeating an epileptic seizure.