1880 in the United States

Events from the year 1880 in the United States.

Incumbents

Federal government">Federal government of the United States">Federal government

President: Rutherford B. Hayes
[Vice President of the United States|President of the United States|Vice President]: William A. Wheeler
Chief Justice: Morrison Waite
Speaker of the House of Representatives: Samuel J. Randall
Congress: 46th

Events

February - The journal Science is first published, with financial backing from Thomas Edison.
February 2 - The first electric streetlight is installed in Wabash, Indiana.
March 31 - Wabash, Indiana becomes the first electrically lighted city in the world.
May - Woman's Institute of Yonkers was established; it is Yonkers' oldest social service agency
May 11 - 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 - In Menlo Park, New Jersey, Thomas Edison performs the first test of his electric railway.
May 30 - League of American Wheelmen is founded in Newport, Rhode Island.
June 1 - 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 - Rufus W. Cobb is reelected the 25th governor of Alabama defeating James Madison Pickens.
September 30 - Amateur astronomer Henry Draper takes the first ever photograph of the Orion Nebula.
October 6 - The University of Southern California opens its doors to 53 students and 10 faculty.
October 15 - The first blizzard mentioned in Laura Ingalls Wilder's The Long Winter sweeps over the prairie in Dakota Territory.
November 2 - U.S. presidential election, 1880: James Garfield defeats Winfield S. Hancock.
November 4 - The first cash register is patented by James and John Ritty of Dayton, Ohio.
November 22 - 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

Sport

September 15 – The Chicago White Stockings clinch their Second National League pennant with a 5–2 win over the Cincinnati Reds.

Births

January–June

January 6 - Tom Mix, Western film actor
January 14 - Joseph Warren Beach, poet, novelist, critic and literary scholar
January 20 - Walter W. Bacon, accountant and politician, 60th Governor of Delaware
January 26
* Sylvia Ashton, silent film actress
* Douglas MacArthur, general
January 28 - Dorothy Donnelly, actress and lyricist
January 29 - W. C. Fields, born William Claude Dukenfield, comic actor
February - Maud E. Craig Sampson Williams, African American suffragist
February 12 - John L. Lewis, labor union leader
February 14 - Frederick J. Horne, admiral
February 16 - Frank Burke, baseball player
February 19 - Arthur Shepherd, composer
February 2 - Angelina Weld Grimke, African American lesbian journalist and poet
March 4 - Channing Pollock, playwright and critic
March 10 - Broncho Billy Anderson, Western film actor
March 11 - Harry H. Laughlin, eugenicist
March 28 - Louis Wolheim, character actor
April 18 - Sam Crawford, baseball player
May 6 - William Joseph Simmons, founder of the second Ku Klux Klan in 1915
June 4 - Clara Blandick, actress
June 9 - William S. Pye, admiral
June 11 - Jeannette Pickering Rankin, first woman elected to U.S. Congress
June 17 - Carl Van Vechten, writer and photographer
June 21 - Arnold Gesell, developmental psychologist
June 24 - Oswald Veblen, mathematician
June 26 - Mitchell Lewis, actor
June 27 - Helen Keller, campaigner for the deaf and blind

July–December

July 10 - Greye La Spina, born Fanny Greye Bragg, fiction writer
July 12 - Tod Browning, motion picture director, horror film pioneer
July 26 - Jean Clemens, youngest child of Mark Twain
July 30 - Robert R. McCormick, newspaper publisher
August 2 - Arthur Dove, abstract painter
August 10
* Robert L. Thornton, businessman, philanthropist and mayor of Dallas, Texas
* Catherine Evans Whitener, textile manufacturer
August 12 - Christy Mathewson, baseball player
August 22 - George Herriman, cartoonist
September 14 - Archie Hahn, sprinter
September 12 - H. L. Mencken, journalist
September 24 - Sarah Knauss, supercentenarian, all-time longest lived American
October 4 - Damon Runyon, writer
October 31 - A. J. Rosier, politician
November 1 - Grantland Rice, sportswriter
November 10 - Jacob Epstein, sculptor
November 12 - Harold Rainsford Stark, admiral
December 4 - Garfield Wood, motorboat racer
December 24 - Johnny Gruelle, cartoonist and children's book author
December 31 - George Marshall, United States Secretary of State, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953

Undated

Eliza Grant, African American midwife
Aunt Molly Jackson, folk singer and union activist

Deaths

January 1 - Morris Ketchum, financier
January 8 - "Emperor Norton", eccentric
January 12 - Ellen Lewis Herndon Arthur, wife of future President Chester A. Arthur
January 19 - James Westcott, U.S. Senator from Florida from 1845 to 1849, died in Montréal, Québec, Canada
February 14 - Samuel G. Arnold, U.S. Senator from Rhode Island from 1862 to 1863
February 17 - James Lenox, bibliophile
May 4 - Edward Clark, Confederate Governor of Texas
May 8 - Jones Very, Transcendentalist essayist, poet, clergyman and mystic
June 12 - Albert G. Brown, U.S. Senator from Mississippi from 1854 to 1861
June 13 - James A. Bayard Jr., U.S. Senator from Delaware from 1851 to 1864
June 17 - James B. Howell, U.S. Senator from Iowa from 1870 to 1871
June 28 - Texas Jack Omohundro, frontier scout, actor and cowboy
July 7 - Lydia Maria Child, novelist and abolitionist
July 21 - Hiram Walden, politician
August 9 - William Bigler, U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania from 1856 to 1861
August 16 - Herschel Vespasian Johnson, United States Senator from Georgia from 1863 until 1865.
August 19 - James Seddon, 4th Confederate States Secretary of War
August 24 - Ouray, Ute leader
September 19 - Lafayette S. Foster, U.S. Senator from Connecticut from 1855 to 1867
October - Victorio, Chiricahua Apache chief
November 3 - Solon Robinson, founder of Crown Point, Indiana
November 9 - Edwin Drake, first American to successfully drill for oil
November 11 - Lucretia Mott, abolitionist and women's rights activist
December 20 - Gaspar Tochman, lawyer and Confederate colonel
December 30 - Epes Sargent, editor, poet and playwright