1869 in the United States

Incumbents

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

• President: Andrew Johnson , Ulysses S. Grant
• Vice President: vacant, Schuyler Colfax
• Chief Justice: Salmon P. Chase
• Speaker of the House of Representatives:
• * until March 3: Schuyler Colfax
• * March 3–March 4: Theodore Medad Pomeroy
• * starting March 4: James G. Blaine
• Congress: 40th, 41st

  Governors

Lieutenant Governors

Events

January–March

• January 1 - Sigma Nu, the first anti-hazing honor/social fraternity, is founded, at Virginia Military Institute.
• January 20 - Elizabeth Cady Stanton is the first woman to testify before the United States Congress.
• January 21 - The P.E.O. Sisterhood, a philanthropic educational organization for women, is founded at Iowa Wesleyan College in Mount Pleasant, Iowa.
• February 15 - Charges of treason against Jefferson Davis are dropped.
• March 4 - Ulysses S. Grant is sworn in as the 18th President of the United States.
• March 9 - Southern Illinois University Carbondale is established by the state legislature as Southern Illinois Normal College.

  April–June

• April 6 - The American Museum of Natural History is founded in New York City.
• May 6 - Purdue University is founded in West Lafayette, Indiana.
• May 10 - The "golden spike" is driven marking the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad in Promontory, Utah.
• May 15 - Woman's suffrage: In New York, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton form the National Woman Suffrage Association.
• May 26 - Boston University is chartered by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
• June 1
• * The Cincinnati Red Stockings open the baseball season as the first fully professional baseball team.
• * Thomas Edison is granted his first patent for the Electric Vote Recorder.
• June 15 - John Wesley Hyatt patents the first plastic, Celluloid, in Albany, New York.

  July–September

• July 4 - World's first rodeo held in Deer Trail, Colorado
• September 15 - Brooklyn Fire Department organized as a professional brigade.
• September 24 - Black Friday: The Fisk-Gould Scandal causes a financial panic in the United States.

  October–December

• October 8 - New York Foundling Asylum incorporated.
• October 11 - Gamma Sigma becomes the first high school fraternity in North America at Brockport Normal School, Brockport, New York.
• October 16 - The Tremont House in Boston becomes the first hotel to have indoor plumbing.
• November 6 - The first intercollegiate game of American football is played: Rutgers University defeats Princeton University 6–4 in a college football game.
• December 7 - Outlaw Jesse James commits his first confirmed bank robbery, in Gallatin, Missouri.
• December 10
• *The first American chapter of Kappa Sigma is founded at the University of Virginia.
• *The Wyoming territorial legislature gives women the right to vote, one of the first such laws in the world.

  Undated

• The H. J. Heinz Company is founded as Heinz Noble & Company in Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania.
• James Gordon Bennett, Jr. of the New York Herald asks Henry Morton Stanley to find Dr. Livingstone.
• Marcus Jastrow arrives in the United States to become rabbi of Congregation Rodeph Shalom in Philadelphia.

  Ongoing

• Reconstruction era
• Gilded Age

  Sport

• November 6 - College of New Jersey defeat the Rutgers Queensmen 6 to 4 in New Brunswick, N.J. in what is widely considered the first ever American Football game with Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, becoming known as "The Birthplace of College Football"

  Births

• January 10 - Rachel Davis Harris, African American librarian
• February 2 - Smith W. Brookhart, U.S. Senator from Iowa from 1922 to 1926
• February 19 - Frederic C. Walcott, U.S. Senator from Connecticut from 1929 to 1935
• April 2 - Hughie Jennings, baseball player
• April 4 - Mary Colter, architect
• April 6 - John W. Brady, Texas judge and murderer
• April 8 - Harvey Cushing, neurosurgeon
• April 9 - James Thomas Heflin, U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1920 to 1931
• May 3 - Warren Terhune, U.S. Navy Commander and 13th Governor of American Samoa
• May 23 - Olivia Ward Bush-Banks, poet and journalist
• June 10 - William Kenyon, U.S. Senator from Iowa from 1909 to 1922
• July 17 - Mariette Rheiner Garner, wife of John Nance Garner, Second Lady of the United States
• July 20 - Howard Thurston, stage magician
• August 5 - J. C. W. Beckham, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1915 to 1921
• August 9 - Annie Malone, née Turnbo, African American millionaire businesswoman, inventor and philanthropist
• November 20 - Alma Webster Hall Powell, opera singer, suffragist, and inventor
• December 16 - Bertha Lamme, electrical engineer
• December 22
• * Nathan Paine, lumber baron
• * Edwin Arlington Robinson, poet

  Deaths

• January 1 - Martin W. Bates, U.S. Senator from Delaware from 1857 to 1859
• January 11 - Sophia Dallas, wife of George M. Dallas, Second Lady of the United States
• February 18 - Walker Brooke, U.S. Senator from Mississippi from 1852 to 1853
• March 13 - James Guthrie, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1865 to 1868
• April 13 - Isaiah Rogers, architect
• May 23 - Alexander O. Anderson, U.S. Senator from Tennessee from 1840 to 1841
• July 18 - Laurent Clerc, advocate for the deaf
• July 22 - John A. Roebling, bridge engineer
• July 30 - Isaac Toucey, U.S. Senator from Connecticut from 1851 to 1857
• August 6 - David J. Baker, U.S. Senator from Illinois in 1830
• September 10 - John Bell, U.S. Senator from Tennessee from 1847 to 1859
• October 8 - Franklin Pierce, 14th President of the United States from 1853 to 1857
• October 15 - William Hamlin, engraver
• November 11 - Hiram Bingham I, missionary to Hawaii
• November 21 - Benjamin Fitzpatrick, U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1848 to 1849 and 1853 to 1861
• December 18 - Louis Moreau Gottschalk, composer and pianist
• December 24 - Edwin Stanton, 27th United States Secretary of War
• Sandy Cornish, freed slave and farmer