1880 in the United States

1880
in
the United States

Decades:
  • 1860s
  • 1870s
  • 1880s
  • 1890s
  • 1900s
See also:
1880 in the United States (Randall D. Sale and Edwin D. Karn, American Expansion Maps, 1962)

Events from the year 1880 in the United States.

Incumbents

Federal government

  • President: Rutherford B. Hayes (R-Ohio)
  • Vice President: William A. Wheeler (R-New York)
  • Chief Justice: Morrison Waite (Ohio)
  • Speaker of the House of Representatives: Samuel J. Randall (D-Pennsylvania)
  • Congress: 46th

Demographics

Events

November 2: James Garfield elected president
  • February – The journal Science is first published, with financial backing from Thomas Edison.
  • February 2 – The first electric streetlight is installed in Wabash, Indiana.
  • March 31 – Wabash, Indiana becomes the first electrically lighted city in the world.
  • May 11 – Mussel Slough Tragedy: A land dispute between the Southern Pacific Railroad and settlers in Hanford, California, turns deadly when a gun battle breaks out, leaving 7 dead.
  • May 13 – In Menlo Park, New Jersey, Thomas Edison performs the first test of his electric railway.
  • May 30 – League of American Wheelmen is founded in Newport, Rhode Island.
  • June 1 – United States Census is 50,155,783. More than 100,000 Chinese men and 3,000 Chinese women are living in the western United States.
  • August 1 – Rufus W. Cobb is reelected the 25th governor of Alabama defeating James Madison Pickens.
  • September 30 – Amateur astronomer Henry Draper takes the first ever photograph of the Orion Nebula.
  • October 6 – The University of Southern California opens its doors to 53 students and 10 faculty.
  • October 15 – The first blizzard mentioned in Laura Ingalls Wilder's The Long Winter sweeps over the prairie in Dakota Territory.
  • November 2 – U.S. presidential election, 1880: James Garfield defeats Winfield S. Hancock.
  • November 4 – The first cash register is patented by James and John Ritty of Dayton, Ohio.
  • November 22 – Vaudeville actress Lillian Russell makes her debut at Tony Pastor's Theatre in New York City.

Undated

  • The Department of Scientific Temperance Instruction of the Women's Christian Temperance Union is established.
  • Charles Wesley Emerson founds the Boston Conservatory of Elocution, Oratory, and Dramatic Art, predecessor of Emerson College.

Ongoing

Sport

  • September 15 – The Chicago White Stockings clinch their Second National League pennant with a 5–2 win over the Cincinnati Reds.

Births

January–June

  • January 6 – Tom Mix, Western film actor (d. 1940)
  • January 14 – Joseph Warren Beach, poet, novelist, critic and literary scholar (d. 1957)
  • January 20 – Walter W. Bacon, accountant and politician, 60th Governor of Delaware (d. 1962)
  • January 26
    • Sylvia Ashton, silent film actress (d. 1940)
    • Douglas MacArthur, general (d. 1964)
  • January 28 – Dorothy Donnelly, actress and lyricist (d. 1928)
  • January 29 – W. C. Fields, born William Claude Dukenfield, comic actor (d. 1946)
  • February – Maud E. Craig Sampson Williams, African American suffragist (d. 1958)
  • February 12 – John L. Lewis, labor union leader (d. 1969)
  • February 14 – Frederick J. Horne, admiral (d. 1959)
  • February 16 – Frank Burke, baseball player (d. 1946)
  • February 19 – Arthur Shepherd, composer (d. 1958)
  • February 2 – Angelina Weld Grimke, African American lesbian journalist and poet (d. 1958)
  • March 4 – Channing Pollock, playwright and critic (d. 1946)
  • March 10 – Broncho Billy Anderson, Western film actor (d. 1971)
  • March 11 – Harry H. Laughlin, eugenicist (d. 1943)
  • March 28 – Louis Wolheim, character actor (d. 1931)
  • April 18 – Sam Crawford, baseball player (d. 1968)
  • May 6 – William Joseph Simmons, founder of the second Ku Klux Klan in 1915 (d. 1945)
  • June 4 – Clara Blandick, actress (d. 1962)
  • June 9 – William S. Pye, admiral (d. 1959)
  • June 11 – Jeannette Pickering Rankin, first woman elected to U.S. Congress (d. 1973)
  • June 17 – Carl Van Vechten, writer and photographer (d. 1964)
  • June 21 – Arnold Gesell, developmental psychologist (d. 1961)
  • June 24 – Oswald Veblen, mathematician (d. 1960)
  • June 26 – Mitchell Lewis, actor (d. 1956)
  • June 27 – Helen Keller, campaigner for the deaf and blind (d. 1968)[1]

July–December

  • July 10 – Greye La Spina, born Fanny Greye Bragg, fiction writer (d. 1969)
  • July 12 – Tod Browning, motion picture director, horror film pioneer (d. 1962)
  • July 26 – Jean Clemens, youngest child of Mark Twain (d. 1909)
  • July 30 – Robert R. McCormick, newspaper publisher (d. 1955)
  • August 2 – Arthur Dove, abstract painter (d. 1946)
  • August 10
    • Robert L. Thornton, businessman, philanthropist and mayor of Dallas, Texas (d. 1964)
    • Catherine Evans Whitener, textile manufacturer (d. 1964)
  • August 12 – Christy Mathewson, baseball player (d. 1925)
  • August 22 – George Herriman, cartoonist (d. 1944)
  • September 14 – Archie Hahn, sprinter (d. 1955)
  • September 12 – H. L. Mencken, journalist (d. 1956)[2]
  • September 24 – Sarah Knauss, supercentenarian, all-time longest lived American (d. 1999)
  • October 4 – Damon Runyon, writer (d. 1946)[3]
  • October 31 – A. J. Rosier, politician (d. 1932)[4]
  • November 1 – Grantland Rice, sportswriter (d. 1954)
  • November 10 – Jacob Epstein, sculptor (d. 1959 in the United Kingdom)
  • November 12 – Harold Rainsford Stark, admiral (d. 1972)
  • December 4 – Garfield Wood, motorboat racer (d. 1971)
  • December 24 – Johnny Gruelle, cartoonist and children's book author (d. 1938)
  • December 31 – George Marshall, United States Secretary of State, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953 (d. 1959)

Undated

  • Eliza Grant, African American midwife[5]
  • Aunt Molly Jackson, folk singer and union activist (d. 1960)

Deaths

  • January 1 – Morris Ketchum, financier (b. 1796)
  • January 8 – "Emperor Norton", eccentric (b. c.1818 in the United Kingdom)
  • January 12 – Ellen Lewis Herndon Arthur, wife of future President Chester A. Arthur (b. 1837)
  • January 19 – James Westcott, U.S. Senator from Florida from 1845 to 1849, died in Montréal, Québec, Canada (b. 1802)
  • February 14 – Samuel G. Arnold, U.S. Senator from Rhode Island from 1862 to 1863 (b. 1821)
  • February 17 – James Lenox, bibliophile (b. 1800)
  • May 4 – Edward Clark, Confederate Governor of Texas (b. 1815)
  • May 8 – Jones Very, Transcendentalist essayist, poet, clergyman and mystic (born 1813)
  • June 12 – Albert G. Brown, U.S. Senator from Mississippi from 1854 to 1861 (b. 1813)
  • June 13 – James A. Bayard Jr., U.S. Senator from Delaware from 1851 to 1864 (b. 1799)
  • June 17 – James B. Howell, U.S. Senator from Iowa from 1870 to 1871 (b. 1816)
  • June 28 – Texas Jack Omohundro, frontier scout, actor and cowboy (b. 1846)
  • July 7 – Lydia Maria Child, novelist and abolitionist (b. 1802)
  • July 21 – Hiram Walden, politician (b. 1800)
  • August 9 – William Bigler, U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania from 1856 to 1861 (born 1814)
  • August 16 – Herschel Vespasian Johnson, United States Senator from Georgia from 1863 until 1865. (born 1812)
  • August 19 – James Seddon, 4th Confederate States Secretary of War (born 1815)
  • August 24 – Ouray, Ute leader (b. c. 1833)
  • September 19 – Lafayette S. Foster, U.S. Senator from Connecticut from 1855 to 1867 (born 1806)
  • October – Victorio, Chiricahua Apache chief (b. c.1825)
  • November 3 - Solon Robinson, founder of Crown Point, Indiana (born 1803)
  • November 9 – Edwin Drake, first American to successfully drill for oil (b. 1819)
  • November 11 – Lucretia Mott, abolitionist and women's rights activist (born 1793)
  • December 20 – Gaspar Tochman, lawyer and Confederate colonel (b. 1797 in Poland)
  • December 30 – Epes Sargent, editor, poet and playwright (b. 1813)

See also

  • Timeline of United States history (1860–1899)

References

  1. ^ Nielsen, Kim E. (2007). "The Southern Ties of Helen Keller". Journal of Southern History. 73 (4): 783–806. doi:10.2307/27649568. JSTOR 27649568. Archived from the original on January 9, 2022. Retrieved March 15, 2016.
  2. ^ Evans, Rod L. (2008). "Mencken, H. L. (1880–1956)". In Hamowy, Ronald (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage; Cato Institute. pp. 324–325. doi:10.4135/9781412965811.n196. ISBN 978-1-4129-6580-4. LCCN 2008009151. OCLC 750831024.
  3. ^ "Birth Announcement". The (Manhattan, Kansas) Nationalist. October 7, 1880.
  4. ^ Bartlett, Ichabod Sargent (1918). History of Wyoming. Vol. 2. Chicago: S. J. Clarke Publishing Company. pp. 55–56.
  5. ^ "Folder 373: Fain, Harry (interviewer): Eliza Grant, Midwife". Federal Writers Project Papers. UNC Wilson Library Archives.