1876 in the United States

Incumbents

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

• President: Ulysses S. Grant
• Vice President: vacant
• Chief Justice: Morrison Waite
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Michael C. Kerr , Samuel J. Randall
• Congress: 44th

  Governors

Lieutenant Governors

Events

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.
• 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 11 - Rutherford B. Hayes selected by the Republicans as Presidential Candidate.
• 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.
• June 25 - Indian Wars - Battle of the Little Bighorn: an army under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer is defeated by 1,500-2,500 Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, suffering over 300 casualties.
• June 27 - Samuel J. Tilden selected by the Democrats as Presidential candidate.

  July–September

• July 4 - The United States celebrates its centennial.
• August 1 - Colorado is admitted as the 38th U.S. state.
• 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 6 - Southern Pacific line from Los Angeles to San Francisco completed.
• 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.
• October 6 - American Library Association founded in Philadelphia.
• 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 has not decided until 1877.
• November 10 - The Centennial Exposition ends in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
• November 23 - Corrupt Tammany Hall leader William Marcy 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.
• 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.
• December 29 - Ashtabula River railroad disaster over the Ashtabula River near Ashtabula, Ohio kills 92 and injures 64.

  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.
• First carousel at Coney Island built by Charles I. D. Looff.
• 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
• Gilded Age
• Depression of 1873–79

  Sport

• September 26 - Chicago White Stockings win the First National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs Championship
• December 9 - Yale win College Football National Championship

  Births

• January 12 - Jack London, born John Griffith Chaney, author
• January 23 - Bess Houdini, stage assistant and wife of Harry Houdini
• February 4 - Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn, poet and socialist
• February 16 - Mack Swain, actor and vaudevillian
• March 5 - John Flammang Schrank, attempted assassin of Theodore Roosevelt
• March 11 - Carl Ruggles, composer
• March 21 - Walter Tewksbury, track athlete
• March 31 - William H. Dieterich, U.S. Senator from Illinois from 1933 to 1939
• April 9 - Park Trammell, U.S. Senator from Florida from 1917 to 1936
• April 23 - Mary Ellicott Arnold, social activist
• June 5 - Tony Jackson, jazz pianist
• July 12 - Alphaeus Philemon Cole, portrait painter
• August 8 - Pat McCarran, Democratic United States Senator from Nevada from 1933 until 1954
• August 18 - George B. Martin, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1918 to 1919
• September 13 - Sherwood Anderson, novelist
• September 16
• * Marian Cruger Coffin, landscape architect
• * Marvin Hart, heavyweight boxer
• September 26 - Edith Abbott, social worker and educator
• October 10 - William James Bryan, U.S. Senator from Florida from 1907 to 1908
• November 23 - Thomas M. Storke, U.S. Senator from California from 1938 to 1939
• November 24 - Walter Burley Griffin, architect
• 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.
• December 12 - Alvin Kraenzlein, hurdler

  Deaths

• January 10 – Gordon Granger, U.S. and Union Army general
• January 15 – Eliza McCardle Johnson, First Lady of the United States, Second Lady of the United States
• February 18 – Charlotte Cushman, actress
• April 9 – Charles Goodyear, politician
• April 23 – Archibald Dixon, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1852 to 1855
• May 7 – William Buell Sprague, clergyman and biographer
• June 20 – John Neal, eccentric and influential writer, critic, lecturer, and activist
• June 25 – George Armstrong Custer, U.S. Army colonel
• August 2 – Wild Bill Hickok, gunfighter and gambler
• August 23 – Joseph R. Underwood, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1847 to 1853
• September 27 – Braxton Bragg, U.S. and Confederate Army general
• October 1 – James Lick, land baron
• 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
• December 9 – George Trenholm, 2nd Confederate States Secretary of the Treasury