A graduate of Wabash College, Wilbur Cortez Abbott studied at Cornell University from 1892 until 1895 and at Oxford in 1897 where he received the degree of B.Litt. Abbott taught at several institutions of higher learning including Cornell, University of Michigan, Dartmouth, University of Kansas, before being hired in 1908 at Yale. In 1920 he was offered a position at Harvard University,where he became the Francis Lee Higginson Professor of History.