1876 in the United States

1876 in the United States
Years:	1873 1874 1875 – 1876 – 1877 1878 1879
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37 stars (1867–77)
Timeline of United States history History of the United States (1865–1918)

Events from the year 1876 in the United States.

Incumbents

Federal Government

• President: Ulysses S. Grant (R-New York)
• 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

"Centennial Mirror", showing events from 1776 (left) compared with similar events in 1876 (right)

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 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: 300 men of the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer are wiped out by 5,000 Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.

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 in a poker game in Deadwood, South Dakota
• August 8 – Thomas Edison receives a patent for his mimeograph.
• 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.
• 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 is 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.

Undated

• 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.
• 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)

Births

• January 12 – Jack London, born John Griffith Chaney, author (died 1916)
• January 23 – Bess Houdini, stage assistant and wife of Harry Houdini (died 1943)
• February 4 – Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn, poet and socialist (died 1959)
• February 16 – Mack Swain, actor and vaudevillian (died 1935)
• March 5 – John Flammang Schrank, attempted assassin of Theodore Roosevelt (died 1943)
• March 11 – Carl Ruggles, composer (died 1971)
• March 21 – Walter Tewksbury, track athlete (died 1968)
• March 31 – William H. Dieterich, U.S. Senator from Illinois from 1933 to 1939 (died 1940)
• April 9 – Park Trammell, U.S. Senator from Florida from 1917 to 1936 (died 1936)
• April 23 – Mary Ellicott Arnold, social activist (died 1968)
• May 21 – Augustus Owsley Stanley, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1919 to 1925 (died 1958)
• June 5 – Tony Jackson, jazz pianist (died 1920)
• July 12 – Alphaeus Philemon Cole, portrait painter (died 1988)
• August 18 – George B. Martin, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1918 to 1919 (died 1945)
• September 13 – Sherwood Anderson, novelist (died 1941)
• September 16 – Marvin Hart, heavyweight boxer (died 1931)
• September 26 – Edith Abbott, social worker and educator (died 1957)
• October 10 – William James Bryan, U.S. Senator from Florida from 1907 to 1908 (died 1908)
• November 23 – Thomas M. Storke, U.S. Senator from California from 1938 to 1939 (died 1971)
• November 24 – Walter Burley Griffin, architect (died 1937)
• November 29 – Nellie Tayloe Ross, 14th Governor of Wyoming from 1925 to 1927 and director of the United States Mint from 1933 to 1953; first female state governor in the U.S. (died 1977)
• December 12 – Alvin Kraenzlein, hurdler (died 1928)

Deaths

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

External links

• Media related to 1876 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons