Joseph Barlow Felt, son of John and Elizabeth (Curtis) Felt, was born in Salem, Massachusetts on December 22, 1789. His father, a ship master in the European and Indian trade, died on Martha's Vineyard in 1802, leaving little property to his wife and five children. At the age of fourteen, he went to work in a store. In June 1808, he entered a private academy in Atkinson, New Hampshire, which was then under the charge of John Vose. In 1809, he became a member of the freshman class of Dartmouth College and subsequently graduated in 1813.

In January 1814 he began preparation for the ministry, under the direction of Rev. Samuel Worcester of Salem. While pursuing his studies, he taught at a private school until December 17, 1819. Meanwhile he received a license to preach on March 2, 1815 from the Essex Association and was frequently employed by congregations in Salem and its vicinity.

He married Abigail-Adams Shaw (1790-1859) on September 18, 1816. After declining several calls from other congregations, Felt was ordained as a minister of the Congregational Society at Sharon, Massachusetts on December 19, 1821; he remained there until April 19, 1824. On June 16, 1824, he settled at Hamilton, Massachusetts, as successor of Rev. Manasseh Cutler, and continued to perform his parochial duties until December 4, 1833, when he dissolved his pastoral relation with that church due to ill health.

On October 31, 1834 Felt moved to Boston, Massachusetts with his family. He was commissioned by Governor Everett, in April 1836, to arrange the disorganized ancient state papers; in 1845 he spent six weeks in England searching for duplicates of lost records. By 1846, the state archives were contained in several scores of classified volumes. In 1839 he published a History of Massachusetts Currency, which was an expansion of two lectures delivered at the request of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Felt served as librarian of the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1842-1858. He was president of the New England Historic Genealogical Society in 1850-1853, recording secretary of the American Statistical Association in 1839-1859, and a member of many other historical societies. Dartmouth gave him the degree of LL.D. in 1857.

Mr. Felt's first wife of nearly forty-three years, died in Boston, July 5, 1859. In June, 1861, he retired to Salem, where he engaged in literary work. He studied New England history and published many books: Annals of Salem (Salem. Massachusetts, 1827; 2d ed., 2 vols., 1845-1849); History of Ipswich, Essex, and Hamilton, including numerous biographies (Cambridge, 1833); Historical Account of Massachusetts Currency (Boston, 1839); memoirs of Roger Conant (1848), Hugh Peters (1851), and William S. Shaw (1852); Genealogical Items for Gloucester and Lynn (1850-1851); The Customs of New England (1853); Ecclesiastical History of New England (2 vols., Boston, 1855-1862); and various addresses. He married a second time on November 16, 1862 to Mrs. Catharine Bartlett Meacham (1795-1869), of Haverhill, Massachusetts. He left no children. He died on September 8, 1869, at the age of 80 years.