1891 in the United States

Federal government

• President: Benjamin Harrison (R-Indiana)
• Vice President: Levi P. Morton (R-New York)
• Chief Justice: Melville Fuller (Illinois)
• Speaker of the House of Representatives:

Thomas Brackett Reed (R-Maine) (until March 4)

Charles Frederick Crisp (D-Georgia) (starting December 8)

• Congress: 51st (until March 4), 52nd (starting March 4)

Undated

• Seattle University is established as the Immaculate Conception school.
• Marie Owens becomes (probably) the first female police officer in the U.S., with the Chicago Police Department.
• Jesse W. Reno invents the first working escalator, installed as an attraction at the Old Iron Pier, Coney Island, New York City.

Ongoing

• Gilded Age (1869–c. 1896)
• Gay Nineties (1890–1899)
• Progressive Era (1890s–1920s)
• Garza Revolution in Texas and Mexico (1891–1893)

January–June

• January 1 – Charles Bickford, actor (died 1967)
• January 2 – Charles P. Thompson, actor (died 1979)
• January 7 – Zora Neale Hurston, Harlem Renaissance writer (died 1960)
• January 25 – Wellman Braud, jazz bassist (died 1966)
• January 28 – Bill Doak, baseball player (died 1954)
• January 30 – Walter Beech, aviator and aircraft manufacturer (died 1950)
• February 10 – Elliot Paul, writer (died 1958)
• February 12 – Eugene Millikin, U.S. Senator from Colorado from 1941 to 1957 (died 1958)
• February 13 – Grant Wood, painter (died 1942)
• February 15 – Henry J. Knauf, politician (died 1950)
• March 10 – Sam Jaffe, actor (died 1984)
• March 19 – Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the United States (died 1974)
• March 26 – Will Wright, actor (died 1962)
• April 13 – Nella Larsen, novelist (died 1964)
• April 15 – Wallace Reid, actor (died 1923)
• April 19 – W. Alton Jones, industrialist and philanthropist (died 1962)
• April 26 – Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, mistress of Franklin D. Roosevelt (died 1948)
• May 21 – John Peale Bishop, writer (died 1944)
• May 22 – Eddie Edwards, jazz trombonist (died 1963)
• May 24 – William F. Albright, archeologist and Biblical scholar (died 1971)
• May 26 –
  • Maxwell Bodenheim, poet and novelist (murdered 1954)
  • Mamie Smith, African American blues singer (died 1946)
• May 30 – Ben Bernie, bandleader (died 1943)
• June 3 – Jim Tully, vagabond, pugilist and writer (died 1947)
• June 8 – Audrey Munson, model and silent film actress (died 1996)
• June 9 – Cole Porter, composer and songwriter (died 1964)
• June 28
  • Esther Forbes, historical fiction writer (died 1967)
  • Carl Panzram, serial killer and rapist (executed 1930)
• June 30 – Man Mountain Dean, wrestler (died 1953)

July–December

• July 5 – John Howard Northrop, biochemist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1946 (suicide 1987)
• July 10 – Edith Quimby, medical researcher and physicist (died 1982)
• July 16 – Blossom Seeley, singer and vaudeville performer (died 1974)
• July 18 – Billy Sullivan, actor (died 1946)
• July 26 – William J. Connors, politician (died 1961)
• August 1 – Edward Streeter, humorist (died 1976)
• August 15 – Chief Yowlachie, Native American actor (died 1966)
• August 29 – Joyce Hall, founder of Hallmark Cards (died 1982)
• September 3 – Annie Elizabeth Delany, African American physician and author (died 1995)
• September 28 – Myrtle Gonzalez, silent film actress (died 1918)
• October 7 – Charles R. Chickering, illustrator (died 1970)
• October 25 – Charles Coughlin, antisemitic radio host and Catholic priest (died 1979)
• October 29 – Fanny Brice, actress, comedian and singer (died 1951)
• November 2 – David Townsend, art director (died 1935)
• November 7 – Miriam Cooper, silent film actress (died 1976)
• November 10 – Carl Stalling, cartoon film composer (died 1972)
• November 15 – Vincent Astor, philanthropist (died 1959)
• November 20 – Leon Cadore, baseball pitcher (died 1958)
• December 14
  • Katherine MacDonald, silent film actress (died 1956)
  • Lester Melrose, record producer of the Chicago blues genre (died 1968)
• December 26 – Henry Miller, novelist (died 1980)