1839 in the United States
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Events from the year 1839 in the United States.
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Incumbents
Federal government
- President: Martin Van Buren (D-New York)
- Vice President: Richard M. Johnson (D-Kentucky)
- Chief Justice: Roger B. Taney (Maryland)
- Speaker of the House of Representatives:
- James K. Polk (D-Tennessee) (until March 4)
- Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter (W-Virginia) (starting December 16)
State governments
Events
- February 11 â The University of Missouri is established in Columbia, Missouri, becoming the first public university west of the Mississippi River.
- March 5 â Longwood University is founded in Farmville, Virginia.
- March 7 â Baltimore City College, the third public high school in the United States, is established in Baltimore, Maryland.
- March 23 â The Boston Morning Post first records the use of "OK".
- August 8 â The Beta Theta Pi fraternity is founded in Oxford, Ohio.
- October â Robert Cornelius takes the first photographic self portrait in the United States.
- October 7 â Much of downtown Mobile, Alabama is destroyed by a wind-fueled fire.[1]
- October 15 â Episcopal High School, Alexandria, Virginia, is founded, the first in the state.[2][3]
- November 11 â The Virginia Military Institute is founded in Lexington, Virginia.
- November 27 â In Boston, Massachusetts, the American Statistical Association is founded.
Undated
- The first U.S. state law permitting women to own property is passed in Jackson, Mississippi.
Ongoing
- Second Seminole War (1835â1842)
Births
- February 9 â Laura Redden Searing, deaf poet and journalist (died 1923)
- March 9 â Phoebe Knapp, hymn writer (d. 1908)
- April 7 â David Baird, Ireland-born U.S. Senator from New Jersey from 1918 to 1919 (died 1927)
- July 8 â John D. Rockefeller, oil industry business magnate and philanthropist (died 1937)
- August 1 â Middleton P. Barrow, U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1882 to 1883 (died 1903)
- August 23 â George Clement Perkins, U.S. Senator from California from 1893 to 1915 (died 1923)
- August 26 â Hernando Money, U.S. Senator from Mississippi from 1897 to 1911 (died 1912)
- September 2 â Henry George, writer, politician and political economist (died 1897)
- September 10 â Charles Sanders Peirce, philosopher, logician, scientist, and founder of pragmatism (died 1912)
- September 13 â Thomas J. Mastin, Confederate captain and lawyer (d. 1861)
- September 18 â William J. McConnell, U.S. Senator from Idaho from 1890 to 1891 (died 1925)
- September 28 â Frances Willard, American educator, temperance reformer and women's suffragist (died 1898)
- September 29 â James Kimbrough Jones, U.S. Senator from Arkansas from 1885 to 1903 (died 1908)
- October 20 â Augustus Octavius Bacon, U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1895 to 1914 (died 1914)
- November 4 â Thomas M. Patterson, Ireland-born U.S. Senator from Colorado from 1901 to 1907 (died 1916)
- December 5 â George Armstrong Custer, U.S. Army Officer and Cavalry Commander from Ohio from 1861 to 1876 (died 1876)
- December 12 â Caroline Ingalls (b. Caroline Lake Quiner), American pioneer, mother of author Laura Ingalls Wilder (died 1924)
Deaths
- January 14 â John Wesley Jarvis, portrait painter (born c.1781 in Great Britain)
- February 26 â Sybil Ludington, heroine of the American Revolutionary War (born 1761)
- April 1 â Benjamin Pierce, governor of New Hampshire from 1827 to 1828 and from 1829 to 1830, father of the 14th president of the United States, Franklin Pierce (born 1757)
- April 2 â Hezekiah Niles, magazine publisher (born 1777)
- April 5 â John Tipton, U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1832 to 1839 (born 1786)
- April 22 â Samuel Smith, U.S. Senator from Maryland from 1822 to 1833 (born 1752)
- May 11 â Thomas Cooper, political philosopher (born 1759)
- June 10 â Nathaniel Hale Pryor, sergeant in the Lewis and Clark Expedition (born 1772)
- July 16 â The Bowl (Di'wali), Cherokee chief, shot (born c.1756)
- August 22 â Benjamin Lundy, abolitionist (born 1789)
- September 28 â William Dunlap, actor-manager, dramatist and painter (born 1766)
- December 4 â John Leamy, merchant (born 1757 in Ireland)
