1837 in the United States

Events from the year 1837 in the United States.

Incumbents

[Federal government of [the United States|Federal government]]

President:
[Vice President of the United States|President of the United States|Vice President]:
Chief Justice: Roger B. Taney
Speaker of the House of Representatives: James K. Polk
Congress: 24th, 25th

Governors

Lieutenant governors

Events

January 6 – DePauw University founded in Greencastle, Indiana.
January 26 - Michigan is admitted as the 26th U.S. state.
February 4 – Seminoles attack Fort Foster.
February 8 – Richard Johnson becomes the only vice president of the United States chosen by the United States Senate.
February 15 – Knox College founded in Galesburg, Illinois.
February 16 - Lake County, Indiana, is established by the European Americans.
February 25
* In Philadelphia, The Institute for Colored Youth is founded as the first institution for the higher education of coloreds.
* Thomas Davenport obtains the first United States patent on an electric motor.
March – Victor Séjour's short story "Le Mulâtre", the earliest known work of African American fiction, is published in the French abolitionist journal Revue des Colonies.
March 4
* Martin Van Buren is sworn in as the eighth president of the United States, and Richard M. Johnson is sworn in as the ninth vice president.
* Chicago is granted a city charter by Illinois.
May 10 – Panic of 1837: New York City banks fail, and unemployment reaches record levels.
June 5 – Houston, Texas, is granted a city charter.
June 11 – The Broad Street Riot occurs in Boston, Massachusetts, fueled by ethnic tensions between the Irish and the Yankees.
July – Charles W. King sets sail on the American merchant ship Morrison. In the Morrison incident, he is turned away from Japanese ports with cannon fire.
July 31 – Groundbreaking ceremony for St. Charles College (Louisiana), the first Jesuit college established in the South.
October – First publication of The United States Magazine and Democratic Review.
October 21 – General Thomas Jesup captures Seminole leader Osceola under pretext of negotiations.
October 31 – The steamboat Monmouth disaster on the Mississippi River near Baton Rouge kills over 300 Muscogee being forcibly relocated to the Indian Territory.
November 7 – In Alton, Illinois, abolitionist printer Elijah P. Lovejoy is shot and killed by a pro-slavery mob while he attempts to protect his printing shop from being destroyed a fourth time.
November 8 – Mary Lyon founds Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, which will later become Mount Holyoke College.
John Deere (inventor) begins his agricultural implement manufacturing business, John Deere, in Grand Detour, Illinois.
The Little, Brown and Company publishing house opens its doors in Boston.
John Greenleaf Whittier's first poetry book, Poems Written During the Progress of the Abolition Question in the United States, is published by Boston abolitionists.
Antonija Höffern becomes the first Slovene woman to immigrate to the United States.

Ongoing

Second Seminole War

Births

January 9 - Julius C. Burrows, U.S. Senator from Michigan from 1895 to 1911
January 19 – William Williams Keen, brain surgeon
February 5 - Dwight L. Moody, evangelist
March 1 - William Dean Howells, writer, historian, editor and politician
March 7 - Henry Draper, physician and astronomer
March 18 - Grover Cleveland, 22nd and 24th president of the United States from 1885 to 1889 and 1893 to 1897
March 27 - Kate Fox, medium
April 3 - John Burroughs, nature writer
April 10 - Forceythe Willson, poet
April 17 - J. P. Morgan, financier
* May 26
* Mary Frances McCray, church founder, leader and preacher
* Washington Roebling, civil engineer
May 27 - James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok, gunfighter
May 28
* Samuel D. McEnery, U.S. Senator from Louisiana from 1897 to 1910
* Tony Pastor, impresario and theater owner
June 22
* Paul Morphy, chess player
* Touch the Clouds, Native American Miniconjou chief 7 feet tall
June 25 - Charles Yerkes, financier of rapid transit systems in Chicago and London
July 1 - Henry Rathbone, military officer and diplomat
July 21 - Helen Appo Cook, African American community activist
July 22 - George N. Bliss, Medal of Honor recipient
July 31 - William Quantrill, Confederate leader during the American Civil War
August 30 - Nell Arthur, wife of Chester A. Arthur
September 2 - James H. Wilson, Union Army general in the Civil War
September 8
* Joaquin Miller, born Cincinnatus Heine Miller, "Poet of the Sierras"
* Raphael Pumpelly, geologist and explorer
October 10 - Robert Gould Shaw, Union Army general in the Civil War and reformer
October 12 - Preston B. Plumb, U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1877 to 1891
October 29 - Harriet Powers, African American folk artist
November 3 - John Leary, politician, 37th Mayor of Seattle
November 20 - Lewis Waterman, inventor and businessman
November 28 - John Wesley Hyatt, inventor and industrial chemist
December 10 - Edward Eggleston, novelist and historian
December 15 - George B. Post, architect
December 26
* Morgan Bulkeley, U.S. Senator from Connecticut from 1905 to 1911
* George Dewey, U.S. Admiral of the Navy

Deaths

June 29 - Nathaniel Macon, U.S. Senator from North Carolina from 1815 to 1828
September 28 - David Barton, U.S. Senator from Missouri from 1821 to 1831
October 1 - Robert Clark, politician
October 9 - Oliver H. Prince, U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1828 to 1829
November 7 - Elijah P. Lovejoy, abolitionist
November 11 - Thomas Green Fessenden, poet
December 20 - Francis Neale, Jesuit, President of Georgetown College
Date unknown - Mary Dixon Kies, first American recipient of a U.S. patent