Howard Millar Chapin was born in Providence, Rhode Island on 11 May 1887. 

He was the only child of Charles Value Chapin, a physician, and Anna Augusta Balch, both natives of Rhode Island. He was a descendent of Seth Chapin, a veteran of the American Revolutionary War.

Like his father and grandfather before him, Howard was a graduate of Providence’s Brown University. Initially working as a clerk in a jewellery store, by 1912 Chapin was a correspondent for The Evening News.

He was married on 10 April 1912 to Hope Caroline Brown; in February 1912 he had obtained a passport for them both, prior to their honeymoon to Europe. The newlyweds boarded the Carpathia as first-class passengers.

Chapin, one of at least two newspapermen aboard (another was Carlos Hurd, later a survivor of the Lusitania disaster), found himself in a rare position being able to interact with survivors and managed to interview several, including Richard Norris Williams; a special report was published in The Evening News on 19 April 1912, Chapin also produced a limited editon pamphlet relating antitled The Titanic Disaster.

From 1912 Howard Chapin was the librarian for the Rhode Island Historical Society; he became an authority on colonial history and later wrote a two-volume history of his home state of Rhode Island. In 1926 he produced one of the earliest bibliographies of Titanic-related books.

Chapin and his wife, who were childless, remained avid travellers; he remained a resident of Providence where he died on 18 September 1940.