[1] He graduated from Harvard College in 1831 and in October 1838 was admitted to the bar in Suffolk County, Massachusetts; he set up his office on Tremont Row.

[4] Appleton befriended the poet and professor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow during a trip to Europe in the 1830s; the two became close friends.

[7] When Appleton prepared for a trip to Europe, Frances implied that she would need company in his absence, suggesting she had consented to marriage.

[15] On his return to the United States, Appleton became a member of the board of trustees of the Boston Public Library, a position he held from 1852 to 1856.

[16] His sister died after accidentally catching fire in July 1861;[17] Appleton was in Nahant, Massachusetts at the time and was very affected by her death.

[20] He allowed the oldest of Longfellow's children, Charles, to borrow his yacht for a trip across the Atlantic Ocean in 1866.

[23] Appleton published some poems and, in prose, Nile Journal (1876), Syrian Sunshine (1877), Windfalls (1878), Chequer-Work (1879).

His friend Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote a memorial to him in The Atlantic Monthly: "The city seems grayer and older since he left us, the cold spring wind coming from the bay, harsher and more unfriendly.