1880 in the United States
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Events from the year 1880 in the United States.
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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
State governments
Demographics
Events
- February â The journal Science is first published, with financial backing from Thomas Edison.
- February 2 â The first electric streetlight is installed in Wabash, Indiana.
- March 31 â Wabash, Indiana becomes the first electrically lighted city in the world.
- May â Woman's Institute of Yonkers was established; it is Yonkers' oldest social service agency
- May 11 â 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 â In Menlo Park, New Jersey, Thomas Edison performs the first test of his electric railway.
- May 30 â League of American Wheelmen is founded in Newport, Rhode Island.
- June 1 â 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 â Rufus W. Cobb is reelected the 25th governor of Alabama defeating James Madison Pickens.
- September 30 â Amateur astronomer Henry Draper takes the first ever photograph of the Orion Nebula.
- October 6 â The University of Southern California opens its doors to 53 students and 10 faculty.
- October 15 â The first blizzard mentioned in Laura Ingalls Wilder's The Long Winter sweeps over the prairie in Dakota Territory.
- November 2 â U.S. presidential election, 1880: James Garfield defeats Winfield S. Hancock.
- November 4 â The first cash register is patented by James and John Ritty of Dayton, Ohio.
- November 22 â 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
- Gilded Age (1869âc. 1896)
Sport
- September 15 â The Chicago White Stockings clinch their Second National League pennant with a 5â2 win over the Cincinnati Reds.
Births
JanuaryâJune
- January 6 â Tom Mix, Western film actor (d. 1940)
- January 14 â Joseph Warren Beach, poet, novelist, critic and literary scholar (d. 1957)
- January 20 â 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 â Dorothy Donnelly, actress and lyricist (d. 1928)
- January 29 â W. C. Fields, born William Claude Dukenfield, comic actor (d. 1946)
- February â Maud E. Craig Sampson Williams, African American suffragist (d. 1958)
- February 12 â John L. Lewis, labor union leader (d. 1969)
- February 14 â Frederick J. Horne, admiral (d. 1959)
- February 16 â Frank Burke, baseball player (d. 1946)
- February 19 â Arthur Shepherd, composer (d. 1958)
- February 2 â Angelina Weld Grimke, African American lesbian journalist and poet (d. 1958)
- March 4 â Channing Pollock, playwright and critic (d. 1946)
- March 10 â Broncho Billy Anderson, Western film actor (d. 1971)
- March 11 â Harry H. Laughlin, eugenicist (d. 1943)
- March 28 â Louis Wolheim, character actor (d. 1931)
- April 18 â Sam Crawford, baseball player (d. 1968)
- May 6 â William Joseph Simmons, founder of the second Ku Klux Klan in 1915 (d. 1945)
- June 4 â Clara Blandick, actress (d. 1962)
- June 9 â William S. Pye, admiral (d. 1959)
- June 11 â Jeannette Pickering Rankin, first woman elected to U.S. Congress (d. 1973)
- June 17 â Carl Van Vechten, writer and photographer (d. 1964)
- June 21 â Arnold Gesell, developmental psychologist (d. 1961)
- June 24 â Oswald Veblen, mathematician (d. 1960)
- June 26 â Mitchell Lewis, actor (d. 1956)
- June 27 â Helen Keller, campaigner for the deaf and blind (d. 1968)[1]
JulyâDecember
- July 10 â Greye La Spina, born Fanny Greye Bragg, fiction writer (d. 1969)
- July 12 â Tod Browning, motion picture director, horror film pioneer (d. 1962)
- July 26 â Jean Clemens, youngest child of Mark Twain (d. 1909)
- July 30 â Robert R. McCormick, newspaper publisher (d. 1955)
- August 2 â 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 â Christy Mathewson, baseball player (d. 1925)
- August 22 â George Herriman, cartoonist (d. 1944)
- September 14 â Archie Hahn, sprinter (d. 1955)
- September 12 â H. L. Mencken, journalist (d. 1956)[2]
- September 24 â Sarah Knauss, supercentenarian, all-time longest lived American (d. 1999)
- October 4 â Damon Runyon, writer (d. 1946)[3]
- October 31 â A. J. Rosier, politician (d. 1932)[4]
- November 1 â Grantland Rice, sportswriter (d. 1954)
- November 10 â Jacob Epstein, sculptor (d. 1959 in the United Kingdom)
- November 12 â Harold Rainsford Stark, admiral (d. 1972)
- December 4 â Garfield Wood, motorboat racer (d. 1971)
- December 24 â Johnny Gruelle, cartoonist and children's book author (d. 1938)
- December 31 â 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 â Morris Ketchum, financier (b. 1796)
- January 8 â "Emperor Norton", eccentric (b. c.1818 in the United Kingdom)
- January 12 â Ellen Lewis Herndon Arthur, wife of future President Chester A. Arthur (b. 1837)
- January 19 â James Westcott, U.S. Senator from Florida from 1845 to 1849, died in Montréal, Québec, Canada (b. 1802)
- February 14 â Samuel G. Arnold, U.S. Senator from Rhode Island from 1862 to 1863 (b. 1821)
- February 17 â James Lenox, bibliophile (b. 1800)
- May 4 â Edward Clark, Confederate Governor of Texas (b. 1815)
- May 8 â Jones Very, Transcendentalist essayist, poet, clergyman and mystic (born 1813)
- June 12 â Albert G. Brown, U.S. Senator from Mississippi from 1854 to 1861 (b. 1813)
- June 13 â James A. Bayard Jr., U.S. Senator from Delaware from 1851 to 1864 (b. 1799)
- June 17 â James B. Howell, U.S. Senator from Iowa from 1870 to 1871 (b. 1816)
- June 28 â Texas Jack Omohundro, frontier scout, actor and cowboy (b. 1846)
- July 7 â Lydia Maria Child, novelist and abolitionist (b. 1802)
- July 21 â Hiram Walden, politician (b. 1800)
- August 9 â William Bigler, U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania from 1856 to 1861 (born 1814)
- August 16 â Herschel Vespasian Johnson, United States Senator from Georgia from 1863 until 1865. (born 1812)
- August 19 â James Seddon, 4th Confederate States Secretary of War (born 1815)
- August 24 â Ouray, Ute leader (b. c. 1833)
- September 19 â Lafayette S. Foster, U.S. Senator from Connecticut from 1855 to 1867 (born 1806)
- October â Victorio, Chiricahua Apache chief (b. c.1825)
- November 3 - Solon Robinson, founder of Crown Point, Indiana (born 1803)
- November 9 â Edwin Drake, first American to successfully drill for oil (b. 1819)
- November 11 â Lucretia Mott, abolitionist and women's rights activist (born 1793)
- December 20 â Gaspar Tochman, lawyer and Confederate colonel (b. 1797 in Poland)
- December 30 â Epes Sargent, editor, poet and playwright (b. 1813)
