The article is devoted to the study of little-known facts of the biography of the famous Soviet historian – Nikolai Mikhailovich Druzhinin. On the basis of unpublished archival materials, memoirs and diaries of the scientist, new pages in the biography of Druzhinin, which cover the period from 1886 to 1904 are presented. Family relationships, education, lifestyle – all this formed the inner world, the features of the personality of Druzhinin.