1876 in the United States

Events from the year 1876 in the United States.

Incumbents

Federal Government

* President: Ulysses S. Grant ( R-Illinois)
* Vice President: ''vacant''
* Chief Justice: Morrison Waite (Ohio)
* Speaker of the House of Representatives: Michael C. Kerr ( D-Indiana) (until August 19), Samuel J. Randall ( D-Pennsylvania) (starting December 4)
* Congress: 44th

Events

January–March

* February 2 – The National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs is formed at a meeting in Chicago, Illinois; it replaced the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players. Morgan Bulkeley of the Hartford Dark Blues is selected as the league's first President.
* February 22 – Johns Hopkins University is founded in Baltimore, Maryland.
* February/March – ''The Harvard Lampoon'' humor magazine is founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
* March 7 – Alexander Graham Bell is granted a patent for an invention he calls the telephone (patent #174,466).
* March 10 – Alexander Graham Bell makes the first successful call by saying "''Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.''."

April–June

* April 17 – Friends Academy is founded by Gideon Frost at Locust Valley, New York.
* May 10 – The Centennial Exposition begins in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
* May 18 – Wyatt Earp starts work in Dodge City, Kansas, serving under Marshal Larry Deger.
* June 4 – The Transcontinental Express arrives in San Francisco, California via the First Transcontinental Railroad, 83 hours and 39 minutes after having left New York City.
* June 11 – Rutherford B. Hayes selected by the Republicans as Presidential Candidate.
* June 17 – Indian Wars – Battle of the Rosebud: 1,500 Sioux and Cheyenne led by Crazy Horse beat back General George Crook's forces at Rosebud Creek in Montana Territory.
* June 24 – First published review of ''The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'' by Mark Twain, in a British magazine; the book's first edition has appeared earlier in June in England. (The book is published in the U.S. in December 1876.)
* June 25 – Indian Wars – Battle of the Little Bighorn: an army under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer is defeated by 1,500-2,500 Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, suffering over 300 casualties.
* June 27 – Samuel J. Tilden selected by the Democrats as Presidential candidate.

July–September

* July 4 – The United States celebrates its centennial.
* August 1 – Colorado is admitted as the 38th U.S. state (''see'' History of Colorado).
* August 2 – Wild Bill Hickok is killed during a poker game in Deadwood, Dakota
* August 8 – Thomas Edison receives a patent for his mimeograph.
* September 6 – Southern Pacific line from Los Angeles to San Francisco completed.
* September 7 – In Northfield, Minnesota, Jesse James and the James-Younger Gang attempt to rob the town's bank but are surrounded by an angry mob and are nearly wiped out.

October–December

* October 4 – Texas A&M University opens for classes.
* October 6 – American Library Association founded in Philadelphia.
* November 7 – The presidential election ends indecisively with 184 Electoral College votes for Samuel J. Tilden, 165 for Rutherford B. Hayes, and 20 in dispute. The new president was not decided until 1877.
* November 10 – The Centennial Exposition ends in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
* November 23 – Corrupt Tammany Hall leader William Marcy Tweed (better known as Boss Tweed) is delivered to authorities in New York City after being captured in Spain.
* November 25 – Indian Wars: In retaliation for the dramatic American defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, United States Army troops under General Ranald S. Mackenzie sack Chief Dull Knife's sleeping Cheyenne village at the headwaters of the Powder River (the soldiers destroy all of the villagers' winter food and clothing, and then slash their ponies' throats).
* December 5 – The Brooklyn Theater Fire kills at least 278, possibly more than 300.
* December 6 – The first cremation in the United States takes place in a crematory built by Francis Julius LeMoyne.
* December 29 – Ashtabula River railroad disaster over the Ashtabula River near Ashtabula, Ohio kills 92 and injures 64.

Undated

* Meharry Medical College is founded in Nashville, Tennessee as the Medical Department of Central Tennessee College; it is the first medical school for African Americans in the South.
* Lyford House, by Richardson Bay, Tiburon, California is constructed.
* Heinz Tomato Ketchup introduced.
* Adolphus Busch's brewery, Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis, Missouri, first markets Budweiser, a pale lager, as a nationally sold beer.
* First carousel at Coney Island built by Charles I. D. Looff.
* Spring – Vast numbers of Indians move north to an encampment of the Sioux chief Sitting Bull in the region of the Little Bighorn River, creating the last great gathering of native peoples on the Great Plains.

Ongoing

* Reconstruction era (1865–1877)
* Gilded Age (1869–''c''. 1896)
* Depression of 1873–79 (1873–1879)

Sport

*September 26 - Chicago White Stockings win the First National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs Championship
*December 9 - Yale win College Football National Championship

Births

* January 12
** Jack London, born John Griffith Chaney, author (died 1916)
** W. H. Twining, Speaker of the Colorado House of Representatives (d. 1946)
* January 23 – Bess Houdini, stage assistant and wife of Harry Houdini (died 1943 in the United States, 1943)
* February 4 – Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn, poet and socialist (died 1959 in the United States, 1959)
* February 16 – Mack Swain, actor and vaudevillian (died 1935 in the United States, 1935)
* March 5 – John Flammang Schrank, attempted assassin of Theodore Roosevelt (died 1943 in the United States, 1943)
* March 11 – Carl Ruggles, composer (died 1971 in the United States, 1971)
* March 21 – Walter Tewksbury, track athlete (died 1968 in the United States, 1968)
* March 31 – William H. Dieterich, U.S. Senator from Illinois from 1933 to 1939 (died 1940 in the United States, 1940)
* April 9 – Park Trammell, U.S. Senator from Florida from 1917 to 1936 (died 1936 in the United States, 1936)
* April 23 – Mary Ellicott Arnold, social activist (died 1968 in the United States, 1968)
* June 5 – Tony Jackson (pianist), Tony Jackson, jazz pianist (died 1920 in the United States, 1920)
* July 12 – Alphaeus Philemon Cole, portrait painter (died 1988 in the United States, 1988)
* August 8 – Pat McCarran, Democratic United States Senator from Nevada from 1933 until 1954 (died 1954 in the United States, 1954)
* August 18 – George B. Martin, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1918 to 1919 (died 1945 in the United States, 1945)
* September 13 – Sherwood Anderson, novelist (died 1941 in the United States, 1941)
* September 16
** Marian Cruger Coffin, landscape architect (died 1957 in the United States, 1957)
** Marvin Hart, heavyweight boxer (died 1931 in the United States, 1931)
* September 26 – Edith Abbott, social worker and educator (died 1957 in the United States, 1957)
* October 10 Nash; William James Bryan, U.S. Senator from Florida from 1907 to 1908 (died 1908 in the United States, 1908)
* November 23 – Thomas M. Storke, U.S. Senator from California from 1938 to 1939 (died 1971 in the United States, 1971)
* November 24 – Walter Burley Griffin, architect (died 1937 in the United States, 1937)
* November 29 – Nellie Tayloe Ross, 14th List of Governors of Wyoming, Governor of Wyoming from 1925 to 1927 and director of the United States Mint from 1933 to 1953; first List of female state governors in the United States, female state governor in the U.S. (died 1977 in the United States, 1977)
* December 9 – Pauline Whittier, golfer (died 1946 in the United States, 1946)
* December 12 – Alvin Kraenzlein, hurdler (died 1928 in the United States, 1928)
* December 20 – Walter Sydney Adams, astronomer (died 1956 in the United States, 1956)

Full date unknown

* Halver Halversen, traveling jewelry auctioneer and store owner (d. ?)

Deaths

* January 10 – Gordon Granger, U.S. and Union Army general (born 1822 in the United States, 1822)
* January 15 – Eliza McCardle Johnson, First Lady of the United States, Second Lady of the United States (born 1810 in the United States, 1810)
* February 18 – Charlotte Cushman, actress (born 1816 in the United States, 1816)
* April 9 – Charles Goodyear (politician), Charles Goodyear, politician (born 1804 in the United States, 1804)
* April 23 – Archibald Dixon, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1852 to 1855 (born 1802 in the United States, 1802)
* May 7 – William Buell Sprague, clergyman and biographer (born 1795 in the United States, 1795)
* June 20 – John Neal (writer), John Neal, eccentric and influential writer, critic, lecturer, and activist (born 1793 in the United States, 1793)
* June 25 – George Armstrong Custer, U.S. Army colonel (in battle) (born 1839 in the United States, 1839)
* August 2 – Wild Bill Hickok, gunfighter and gambler (murdered) (born 1837 in the United States, 1837)
* August 23 – Joseph R. Underwood, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1847 to 1853 (born 1791 in the United States, 1791)
* September 27 – Braxton Bragg, U.S. and Confederate Army general (born 1817 in the United States, 1817)
* October 1 – James Lick, land baron (born 1796 in the United States, 1796)
* December 3 – Samuel Cooper (general), Samuel Cooper, United States Army officer during the Second Seminole War and the Mexican–American War, highest-ranking Confederate States Army, Confederate general during the American Civil War (born 1798 in the United States, 1798)
* December 9 – George Trenholm, 2nd Confederate States Secretary of the Treasury (born 1807 in the United States, 1807)

See also

*Timeline of United States history (1860–1899)

References

External links

*

{{Year in North America, 1876

1876 in the United States,
1870s in the United States
1876 by country, United States
1876 in North America, United States
Years of the 19th century in the United States