1872 in the United States

1872 in the United States
Years:	1869 1870 1871 – 1872 – 1873 1874 1875
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37 stars (1867–77)
Timeline of United States history History of the United States (1865–1918)

Events from the year 1872 in the United States.

Incumbents

President Ulysses S Grant by Matthew Brady c. 1870

Federal Government

• President: Ulysses S. Grant (R-Ohio)
• Vice President: Schuyler Colfax (R-Indiana)
• Chief Justice: Salmon P. Chase (originally now residing in from of the U.S. state of Ohio)
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: James G. Blaine (R-Maine)
• Congress: 42nd

Events

Brigham Young, photo circa 1870

Clarence King (1842-1901) as a young man

• January 2 – Brigham Young is arrested for bigamy (25 wives).
• February 13 – Rex, the most famous parade on Mardi Gras, parades for the first time in New Orleans for Grand Duke Alexei Mikhailovich of Russia.
• February 20 – The Metropolitan Museum of Art opens in New York City.
• March 1 – Yellowstone National Park is established as the world's first national park
• March 5 – George Westinghouse patents the air brake for railways.
• March 26 – Earthquake at Lone Pine, California with an estimated Richter magnitude of 7.6 or greater.
• May 10 – Victoria Woodhull becomes the first woman nominated for President of the United States.
• May 22 – Reconstruction: President Ulysses S. Grant signs the Amnesty Act of 1872 into law restoring full civil rights to all but about 500 Confederate sympathizers.
• June 4 – Two men lead investors to land near the Wyoming-Colorado border claiming to have found diamonds there, starting a diamond craze in the western US (which is later revealed as a fraud).^[1]
• September 4 – The New York Sun breaks the story on the Crédit Mobilier of America scandal
• September 26 – The first Shriners Temple (called Mecca) is established in New York City.
• October 1 – The Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College begins its first academic session (the university is later renamed Virginia Tech).
• October 2 – Morgan State University founded.
• November – Ulysses S. Grant defeats Horace Greeley in the U.S. presidential election
• November 5 – Women's suffrage: In defiance of the law, suffragist Susan B. Anthony votes for the first time (on November 18 she was served an arrest warrant and in the subsequent trial she was fined $100 - she never paid the fine).
• November 7 – The Mary Celeste sets sail from New York, bound for Genoa.
• November 9 – Great Boston Fire of 1872: In Boston, Massachusetts, a large fire begins to burn on Lincoln Street. The two-day event destroyed about 65 acres (260,000 m²) of city, 776 buildings, much of the financial district and caused US$60 million in damage.
• November 28 – The geologist Clarence King uncovers the diamond hoax in Wyoming in The New York Times.^[2]
• November 29 – Indian Wars: The Modoc War begins with the Battle of Lost River.
• December 4 – The crewless American-owned ship Mary Celeste is found by the British brig Dei Gratia in the Atlantic.
• December 9 – P. B. S. Pinchback takes office as Governor of Louisiana, the first African American governor of a U.S. state.

Ongoing

William Bell, Perched Rock, western Arizona Territory, 1872 photo for Wheeler Survey

• Reconstruction era (1865–1877)
• Gilded Age (1869–c. 1896)
• The Wheeler Survey of the southwestern US, 1872–1879

Births

• January 20 – Julia Morgan, California architect (died 1957)
• January 31 – Zane Grey, Western novelist (died 1939)
• February 1 – Jerome F. Donovan, politician (died 1949)
• February 9 – Charles Klauder, university architect (died 1938)
• March 3 – Willie Keeler, baseball player (died 1923)
• March 6 – Ben Harney, ragtime pianist and songwriter (died 1938)
• March 14 – William Emerson Brock, U.S. Senator from Tennessee from 1929 to 1931 (died 1950)
• March 15 – Harry Holman, character film actor (died 1947)
• April 5 – Samuel Cate Prescott, food scientist and microbiologist (died 1962)
• April 23 – Nathan Philemon Bryan, U.S. Senator from Florida from 1911 to 1917 (died 1935)
• April 29 – Harry Payne Whitney, businessman and horse breeder (died 1930)
• May 16 – John O'Connell, baseball player (died 1908)
• May 21 – Henry E. Warren, inventor (died 1957)
• May 26 – Zachary Taylor Davis, Chicago architect (died 1946)
• May 31 – Charles Greeley Abbot, astrophysicist (died 1973)
• June 13 – Thomas N. Heffron, film director (died 1951)
• June 27 – Paul Laurence Dunbar, African American poet, novelist, playwright and publisher (died 1906)
• July 4 – Calvin Coolidge, 30th President of the U.S. from 1923 to 1929 (29th Vice President from 1921 to 1923) (died 1933)
• July 8 – John H. Bankhead II, U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1931 to 1946 (died 1946)
• August 2 – George E. Stewart, U.S. Army officer, Medal of Honor recipient (died 1946)
• August 10 – William Manuel Johnson, African American dixieland jazz double-bassist (died 1972)
• August 15 – Rubin Goldmark, composer (died 1936)
• August 26:
  • Joseph Taylor Robinson, U.S. Senator from Arkansas from 1913 to 1937 (died 1937)
  • James J. Couzens, U.S. Senator from Michigan from 1922 to 1936 (died 1936)
• September 20 – Walter E. Scott, "Death Valley Scotty", confidence trickster (died 1954)
• September 28 – Charles F. Watkins, physician (died 1936)
• October 10 – Arthur Talmage Abernethy, journalist, scholar, theologian and poet, 1st North Carolina Poet Laureate from 1948 to 1953 (died 1956)
• October 11 – Harlan F. Stone, 12th Chief Justice of the United States from 1941 (died 1946)
• November 2 – John N. Heiskell, U.S. Senator from Arkansas in 1913 (died 1972)
• November 7 – Leonora Speyer, née von Stosch, classical violinist and poet (died 1956)
• November 11 – Maude Adams, stage actress (died 1953)
• December 9 – Thomas W. Hardwick, U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1914 to 1919 (died 1944)
• December 17 – Walter Loving, African American military bandleader (killed 1945 in the Philippines)

Deaths

• January 4 – Arnold Naudain, U.S. Senator from Delaware from 1830 to 1836 (born 1790)
• January 7 – James Fisk, financier (born 1835)
• January 9 – Henry Halleck, general (born 1815)
• January 21 – Thomas Bragg, U.S. Senator from North Carolina from 1859 to 1861 (born 1810)
• February 7 – James W. Grimes, U.S. Senator from Iowa from 1859 to 1869 (born 1816)
• March or April – Mercator Cooper, sea captain (born 1803)
• March 31 – Samuel Henry Dickson, poet, physician, writer and educator (born 1798)
• April 2 – Samuel Morse, inventor of the Morse code (born 1791)
• April 9 – Erastus Corning, businessman and politician (born 1794)
• April 10 – John Mix Stanley, painter (born 1814)
• May 17 – Eduard Sobolewski, violinist, composer and conductor (born 1804 or 1808 in Poland)
• August – Asa Whitney, merchant and promoter of the first transcontinental railroad (born 1791)
• August 11 – Lowell Mason, organist and composer (born 1792)
• September 18 – Augustus Seymour Porter, U.S. Senator from Michigan from 1840 to 1845 (born 1798)
• September 22 – Garrett Davis, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1861 to 1872 (born 1801)
• November 5 – Thomas Sully, portrait painter (born 1783 in Great Britain)
• November 6 – George Meade, Civil War general (born 1815)
• November 16 – William Gilham, military writer (born 1818)
• November 29 – Horace Greeley, newspaper editor and presidential candidate (born 1811)
• December 23 – George Catlin, painter specializing in portraits of Native Americans (born 1796)
• Henry Howard Brownell, poet and historian (born 1820)

References

External links

• Media related to 1872 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons