1891 in the United States

Incumbents

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

• President: Benjamin Harrison
• Vice President: Levi P. Morton
• Chief Justice: Melville Fuller
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Thomas Brackett Reed , Charles Frederick Crisp
• Congress: 51st, 52nd

  Governors

Lieutenant Governors

Events

• January 20 - Jim Hogg becomes the first native Texan to be governor of that state.
• January 27 – Mammoth Mine disaster
• January 29 - Liliuokalani is proclaimed Queen of Hawaii.
• March 3
• * The International Copyright Act of 1891 is passed by the Fifty-first United States Congress.
• * Yellowstone Timberland Reserve, predecessor of Shoshone National Forest, in Wyoming is established as the first United States National Forest.
• March 14 - In New Orleans, a lynch mob storms the Old Parish Prison and lynches 11 Italians who had been found not guilty of the murder of Police Chief David Hennessy.
• March 30 - Shoshone National Forest is established in Wyoming, the first U.S. National Forest.
• April 1 - The Wrigley Company is founded in Chicago.
• May 5 - The Music Hall in New York has its grand opening and first public performance, with Tchaikovsky as guest conductor.
• May 20 - Thomas Edison's prototype kinetoscope is first displayed at Edison's Laboratory, for a convention of the National Federation of Women's Clubs.
• June 1 - The Johnstown Inclined Plane opens in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
• June 21 - First long-distance transmission of alternating current by the Ames power plant near Telluride, Colorado by Lucien and Paul Nunn.
• October 1 - Stanford University in California opens its doors.
• October 16 - White River National Forest is established in Colorado.
• November 28 - The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers is organized in St. Louis, Missouri.
• December 17 - Drexel University is inaugurated as the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry in Philadelphia.

  Undated

• Seattle University is established as the Immaculate Conception school.
• Marie Owens becomes the first female police officer in the U.S., with the Chicago Police Department.
• Jesse W. Reno invents the first working escalator, installed as an attraction at the Old Iron Pier, Coney Island, New York City.

  Ongoing

• Gilded Age
• Gay Nineties
• Progressive Era
• Garza Revolution in Texas and Mexico

  Births

January–June

• January 1 - Charles Bickford, actor
• January 2 - Charles P. Thompson, actor
• January 7 - Zora Neale Hurston, Harlem Renaissance writer
• January 25 - Wellman Braud, jazz bassist
• January 28 - Bill Doak, baseball player
• February 10 - Elliot Paul, writer
• February 12 - Eugene Millikin, U.S. Senator from Colorado from 1941 to 1957
• February 13 - Grant Wood, painter
• February 15 - Henry J. Knauf, politician
• March 10 - Sam Jaffe, actor
• March 19 - Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the United States
• March 26 - Will Wright, actor
• April 13 - Nella Larsen, novelist
• April 15 - Wallace Reid, actor
• April 19 - W. Alton Jones, industrialist and philanthropist
• May 21 - John Peale Bishop, writer
• May 22 - Eddie Edwards, jazz trombonist
• May 24 - William F. Albright, archeologist and Biblical scholar
• May 26 - Mamie Smith, African American blues singer
• May 30 - Ben Bernie, bandleader
• June 3 - Jim Tully, vagabond, pugilist and writer
• June 8 - Audrey Munson, actress
• June 9 - Cole Porter, composer and songwriter
• June 28 - Esther Forbes, writer
• June 30 - Man Mountain Dean, wrestler

  July–December

• July 5 - John Howard Northrop, biochemist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1946
• July 16 - Blossom Seeley, singer and vaudeville performer
• July 26 - William J. Connors, politician
• August 1 - Edward Streeter, humorist
• September 3 - Bessie Delany, African American physician and author
• September 28 - Myrtle Gonzalez, silent film actress
• October 7 - Charles R. Chickering, illustrator
• October 25 - Charles Coughlin, antisemitic radio host and Catholic priest
• October 29 - Fanny Brice, actress, comedian and singer
• November 2 - David Townsend, art director
• November 7 - Miriam Cooper, silent film actress
• November 10 - Carl Stalling, cartoon film composer
• November 15 - Vincent Astor, philanthropist
• December 14 - Katherine MacDonald, silent film actress
• December 26 - Henry Miller, novelist

  Deaths

• January 5 - Emma Abbott, operatic soprano
• January 17 - George Bancroft, historian
• January 29 - William Windom, U.S. Senator from Minnesota from 1870 to 1881 and from 1881 to 1883
• February 14 - William Tecumseh Sherman, Civil War general
• February 21 - James Timberlake, law enforcement officer
• February 28 - George Hearst, U.S. Senator from California from 1887 to 1891
• March 6
• * George M. Chilcott, U.S. Senator from Colorado from 1882 to 1883
• * Joshua Hill, U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1871 to 1873
• March 21 - Joseph E. Johnston, Confederate Army general
• April 2 - Albert Pike, Confederate military officer, attorney, writer and Freemason
• April 14 - Annie Nowlin Savery, suffragist
• June 9 - Henry Edwards, entomologist and actor
• June 17 - Harrison Ludington, 13th Governor of Wisconsin from 1876 to 1878
• June 21 - Joseph E. McDonald, U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1875 to 1881
• July 4 - Hannibal Hamlin, 15th Vice President of the United States from 1861 to 1865
• August 5 - Thomas S. Bocock, U.S. Congressman, Speaker of the Confederate States House of Representatives
• August 12 - James Russell Lowell, Romantic poet, critic, satirist, writer, diplomat and abolitionist
• August 14
• * John Henry Hopkins Jr., clergyman and hymnist
• * Sarah Childress Polk, First Lady of the U.S.
• August 27 - Samuel C. Pomeroy, U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1861 to 1873
• September 10 - Charles B. Clark, politician and entrepreneur
• September 28 - Herman Melville, novelist, short story writer and poet
• October 16 - Sarah Winnemucca, Northern Paiute author, activist and educator
• November 6 - J. Gregory Smith, Vermont governor
• November 17 - George H. Cooper, admiral
• December 7 - Mary Crane, activist; mother of writer Stephen Crane
• December 12 - Julia A. Ames, reformer
• December 20 - Preston B. Plumb, U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1877 to 1891
• December 29 - Marion McKinley Bovard, academic administrator, 1st President of the University of Southern California