Events from the year 1870 in the United States.
Incumbents
State governments
Demographics
Events
JanuaryâÂÂMarch
- January 1 – Plans for the Brooklyn Bridge are completed.
- January 3 – Construction of the Brooklyn Bridge begins.
- January 10 – John D. Rockefeller incorporates Standard Oil.
- January 15 – A political cartoon for the first time symbolizes the United States Democratic Party with a donkey ("A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion" by Thomas Nast for Harper's Weekly).
- January 26 – Reconstruction: Virginia rejoins the Union.
- January 27 – The first college sorority, Kappa Alpha Theta, is established at DePauw University.
- February 2 – The Cardiff Giant is proven a hoax.
- February 3 – The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, guaranteeing African-American males the right to vote, is ratified.
- February 9 – The Weather Bureau, later renamed the National Weather Service, is established.
- February 10
- Anaheim, California is incorporated.
- The YWCA is founded in New York City.
- February 12 – Women gain the right to vote in Utah Territory. On February 14, in a Salt Lake City municipal election, Seraph Young Ford becomes the first woman in the U.S. to cast her vote.
- February 23 – Military control of Mississippi ends and it is readmitted to the Union.
- February 25 – Hiram Rhodes Revels, a Republican from Mississippi, is sworn into the United States Senate, becoming the first African American ever to sit in the U.S. Congress.
- February 26
- In New York City, the first pneumatic subway is opened.
- Wyatt Outlaw, the first African American town commissioner in Graham, North Carolina, is lynched by mob of Ku Klux Klan on Alamance County courthouse square.
- March 19 – The Ohio Legislature passes the Cannon Act, thereby establishing the Ohio Agriculture and Mechanical College, later Ohio State University.
- March 24 – Syracuse University is established and officially opens.
- March 30
- The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, giving black Americans the right to vote, is proclaimed by Secretary of State Hamilton Fish.
- Texas is readmitted to the Union following Reconstruction.
- March 31 – Thomas Mundy Peterson is the first African-American to vote in an election.
AprilâÂÂJune
JulyâÂÂSeptember
OctoberâÂÂDecember
Undated
Ongoing
Births
- January 9 – Joseph Strauss, bridge engineer (died 1938)
- January 11 – Alexander Stirling Calder, sculptor (died 1945)
- January 13 – Ross Granville Harrison, physiologist (died 1959)
- January 23 – William G. Morgan, inventor of volleyball (died 1942)
- February 20 – Jay Johnson Morrow, military engineer and politician, 3rd Governor of the Panama Canal Zone (died 1937)
- February 26 – John S. Cohen, U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1932 to 1933 (died 1935)
- March 5 – Frank Norris, journalist and naturalist novelist (died 1902)
- March 13
- William Glackens, realist painter (died 1938)
- Seale Harris, physician (died 1957)
- April 4
- Curtis Hidden Page, New Hampshire educator and politician (died 1946)
- George Albert Smith, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (died 1951)
- April 17 – Ray Stannard Baker, journalist and modern historian (died 1946)
- May – Bert Wakefield, Negro leagues baseball player
- May 19 – Albert Fish, serial killer (died 1936)
- May 24 – Benjamin N. Cardozo, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (died 1938)
- May 27 РMary Curzon, Baroness Curzon of Kedleston, n̩e Leiter, Viceregal-Consort of India (died 1905 in the United Kingdom)
- July 17 – Marie Louise Obenauer, labor laws pioneer (died 1947)
- July 25 – Maxfield Parrish, illustrator (died 1966)
- August 3 – Carrie Ingalls, younger sister of author Laura Ingalls Wilder (died 1946)
- August 14 – Nelson McDowell, actor (died 1947)
- August 20 – Edward Stanley Kellogg, 16th Governor of American Samoa (died 1948)
- August 25 – Mihran Kassabian, radiologist (died 1910)
- September 2 – James Bert Garner, chemical engineer and inventor (died 1960)
- September 21 – Elmer Darwin Ball, entomologist (died 1943)
- September 25 – James A. Hawken, schoolteacher (died 1964)
- September 30 – Thomas W. Lamont, banker (died 1948)
- October 7 – Uncle Dave Macon, banjo player and singer-songwriter (died 1952)
- November 2 – Joseph J. Sullivan, gambler (died 1949)
- December 12 – Walter Benona Sharp, oil pioneer (died 1912)
- December 23 – John Marin, modernist painter (died 1953)
- Robert Ames Bennet, Western and science fiction writer (died 1954)
- Zella de Milhau, artist, ambulance driver, community organizer and motorcycle policewoman (b. 1954)
Deaths
- January 17 – Alexander Anderson, illustrator (born 1775)
- January 25 – David Bates, poet (born 1809)
- March 26 РPierre Soul̩, U.S. Senator from Louisiana in 1847 and from 1849 to 1853 (born 1801)
- March 28 – George Henry Thomas, general (born 1816)
- April 15 – Emma Willard, women's rights activist and educationalist (born 1787)
- April 26 – Zerah Colburn, locomotive designer and technical journalist (suicide) (born 1832)
- May 9 – Lawrence Brainerd, U.S. Senator from Vermont from 1854 to 1855 (born 1794)
- June 11 – William Gilmore Simms, Southern poet, novelist and historian (born 1806)
- June 17 РJ̩r̫me Napol̩on Bonaparte, agriculturalist, nephew of Napoleon I (born 1805 in the United Kingdom)
- July 13 – Daniel Sheldon Norton, U.S. Senator from Minnesota from 1865 to 1870 (born 1829)
- June 27 – Cyrus Kingsbury, Congregationalist missionary to Cherokee and Choctaw tribes (died in Choctaw Nation, Indian Territory)
- August 14 – David Farragut, flag officer of the United States Navy during the American Civil War (born 1801)
- September 12 – Fitz Hugh Ludlow, author and explorer (born 1836)
- October 3 – Joseph Mozier, sculptor best known for his work in Italy (born 1812)
- October 12
- Stephen Greenleaf Bulfinch, minister and hymn writer (born 1809)
- Robert E. Lee, General of the Army of Northern Virginia during the American Civil War (born 1807)
- November 24 – John Christian Jacobson, Moravian bishop
- December 5 – David Gouverneur Burnet, politician (born 1788)
- December 16 – Byron Kilbourn, surveyor, railroad executive and politician (born 1801)
- December 28 – Wilson Lumpkin, U.S. Senator from Georgia and Governor of Georgia from 1831 to 1835 (born 1783)
See also
References
External links