1809 in the United States

Incumbents

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

• President: Thomas Jefferson , James Madison
• Vice President: George Clinton
• Chief Justice: John Marshall
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Joseph Bradley Varnum
• Congress: 10th, 11th

  Governors

• Governor of Connecticut: Jonathan Trumbull Jr.
• Governor of Delaware: George Truitt
• Governor of Georgia: Jared Irwin , David Brydie Mitchell
• Governor of Kentucky: Charles Scott
• Governor of Maryland: Robert Wright , Edward Lloyd
• Governor of Massachusetts: Levi Lincoln Sr. , Christopher Gore
• Governor of New Hampshire: John Langdon , Jeremiah Smith
• Governor of New Jersey: Joseph Bloomfield
• Governor of New York: Daniel D. Tompkins
• Governor of North Carolina: David Stone
• Governor of Ohio: Samuel H. Huntington
• Governor of Pennsylvania: Simon Snyder
• Governor of Rhode Island: James Fenner
• Governor of South Carolina: John Drayton
• Governor of Tennessee: John Sevier , Willie Blount
• Governor of Vermont: Isaac Tichenor , Jonas Galusha
• Governor of Virginia: John Tyler Sr.

  Lieutenant Governors

• Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut: John Treadwell , Roger Griswold
• Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky: Gabriel Slaughter
• Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts: Levi Lincoln Sr. , David Cobb
• Lieutenant Governor of New York: John Broome
• Lieutenant Governor of Rhode Island: Simeon Martin
• Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina: Frederick Nance
• Lieutenant Governor of Vermont: Paul Brigham

  Events

• February 3 - Illinois Territory is created.
• February 11 - Robert Fulton patents the steamboat.
• February 17 - Miami University is established on the township of land required to be set aside for it under the conditions of the Miami Purchase in 1794.
• February 20 - A decision by the Supreme Court of the United States states that the power of the federal government is greater than any individual state.
• March 1 - Illinois Territory is effective.
• March 4 - James Madison is sworn in as the fourth President of the United States.
• May 5 - Mary Dixon Kies becomes the first recipient of a patent granted to a woman by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. She invented a technique of weaving straw with silk and thread.
• August - Following refitting, the is recommissioned as the flagship of the North Atlantic Squadron.
• October 11 - Along the Natchez Trace in Tennessee, explorer Meriwether Lewis dies under mysterious circumstances at an inn called Grinder's Stand. It is considered an alleged suicide though some evidence suggests murder.
• December 30 - Wearing masks at balls is forbidden in Boston, Massachusetts.

  Births

• January 18 - Richard C. Gatlin, Confederate Army general
• January 19 – Edgar Allan Poe, author, poet, editor and literary critic
• February 12 – Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States from 1861 till 1865
• February 15 - Cyrus McCormick, businessman and inventor of the mechanical reaper
• February 20 - Henry W. Wessells, Union Army general
• March 1 – Robert Cornelius, pioneer of photography
• March 15 - Joseph Jenkins Roberts, 1st and 7th President of Liberia
• April 21 – Robert M. T. Hunter, Virginian lawyer, politician, 14th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, 2nd Confederate States Secretary of State
• July 24 – Charles W. Cathcart, Portugal-born United States Senator from Indiana from 1845 to 1853
• August 1 – William B. Travis, lieutenant colonel in the Texian Army
• August 15 – Albert Pike, Confederate military officer, attorney, writer, and Freemason
• August 27 – Hannibal Hamlin, the 15th Vice President of the United States from 1861 to 1865
• August 29 – Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., physician, "fireside" poet and polymath
• September 20 – Sterling Price, 11th Governor of Missouri, United States Army brigadier general in the Mexican–American War, Confederate Army major general in the American Civil War
• September 21 - Sophia Hawthorne, painter and illustrator and wife of Nathaniel Hawthorne
• September 27 – Raphael Semmes, officer in the Confederate navy during the American Civil War
• October 11 - Orson Squire Fowler, phrenologist and leading proponent of the octagon house
• November 4 - Benjamin Robbins Curtis, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
• November 13 - John A. Dahlgren, United States Navy officer, inventor of the Dahlgren gun
• November 23 - Horatio P. Van Cleve, Union army general
• December 3 - Thomas Alfred Davies, Union Army brigadier general
• December 5 – Graham N. Fitch, United States Senator from Indiana from 1857 to 1861
• December 10 – George Goldthwaite, United States Senator from Alabama from 1871 till 1877

  Deaths

• January 21 - Josiah Hornblower, statesman and delegate for New Jersey in the Continental Congress in 1785 and 1786
• March 6 - Thomas Heyward Jr., signer of the United States Declaration of Independence and of the Articles of Confederation
• June 8 - Thomas Paine, political activist, philosopher, Founding Father of the United States and author of Common Sense
• October 11 - Meriwether Lewis, leader of the Corps of Discovery
• November 4 - Gabriel Manigault, architect