1839 in the United States

Incumbents

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

• President: Martin Van Buren
• Vice President: Richard M. Johnson
• Chief Justice: Roger B. Taney
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: James K. Polk , Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter
• Congress: 25th, 26th

  Governors

• Governor of Alabama: Arthur P. Bagby
• Governor of Arkansas: James Sevier Conway
• Governor of Connecticut: William W. Ellsworth
• Governor of Delaware: Cornelius P. Comegys
• Governor of Georgia: George R. Gilmer , Charles J. McDonald
• Governor of Illinois: Thomas Carlin
• Governor of Indiana: David Wallace
• Governor of Kentucky: James Clark , Charles A. Wickliffe
• Governor of Louisiana: Edward Douglass White Sr. , André B. Roman
• Governor of Maine: Edward Kent , John Fairfield
• Governor of Maryland: Thomas W. Veazey , William Grason
• Governor of Massachusetts: Edward Everett
• Governor of Michigan: Stevens T. Mason
• Governor of Mississippi:Alexander G. McNutt
• Governor of Missouri: Lilburn W. Boggs
• Governor of New Hampshire: Isaac Hill , John Page
• Governor of New Jersey: William Pennington
• Governor of New York: William H. Seward
• Governor of North Carolina: Edward Bishop Dudley
• Governor of Ohio: Wilson Shannon
• Governor of Pennsylvania: Joseph Ritner , David R. Porter
• Governor of Rhode Island: William Sprague III , Samuel Ward King
• Governor of South Carolina: Patrick Noble
• Governor of Tennessee: Newton Cannon , James K. Polk
• Governor of Vermont: Silas H. Jennison
• Governor of Virginia: David Campbell

  Lieutenant Governors

• Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut: Charles Hawley
• Lieutenant Governor of Illinois: Stinson Anderson
• Lieutenant Governor of Indiana: David Hillis
• Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky: Charles A. Wickliffe , vacant
• Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts: George Hull
• Lieutenant Governor of Missouri: Franklin Cannon
• Lieutenant Governor of New York: Luther Bradish
• Lieutenant Governor of Rhode Island: Joseph Childs , vacant
• Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina: Barnabas Kelet Henagan
• Lieutenant Governor of Vermont: David M. Camp

  Events

• February 11 - The University of Missouri is established in Columbia, Missouri, becoming the first public university west of the Mississippi River.
• March 5 - Longwood University is founded in Farmville, Virginia.
• March 7 - Baltimore City College, the third public high school in the United States, is established in Baltimore, Maryland.
• March 23 - The Boston Morning Post first records the use of "OK".
• August 8 - The Beta Theta Pi fraternity is founded in Oxford, Ohio.
• September 9 - In the Great Fire of Mobile, Alabama hundreds of buildings are burned.
• October - Robert Cornelius takes the first photographic self portrait in the United States.
• November 11 - The Virginia Military Institute is founded in Lexington, Virginia.
• November 27 - In Boston, Massachusetts, the American Statistical Association is founded.

  Undated

• The first U.S. state law permitting women to own property is passed in Jackson, Mississippi.
• Episcopal High School, Alexandria, Virginia, is founded, the first in the state.

  Ongoing

• Second Seminole War

  Births

• February 9 - Laura Redden Searing, deaf poet and journalist
• March 9 - Phoebe Knapp, hymn writer
• April 7 - David Baird, Ireland-born U.S. Senator from New Jersey from 1918 to 1919
• July 8 - John D. Rockefeller, oil industry business magnate and philanthropist
• August 1 - Middleton P. Barrow, U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1882 to 1883
• August 23 - George Clement Perkins, U.S. Senator from California from 1893 to 1915
• August 26 - Hernando Money, U.S. Senator from Mississippi from 1897 to 1911
• September 2 - Henry George, writer, politician and political economist
• September 18 - William J. McConnell, U.S. Senator from Idaho from 1890 to 1891
• September 28 - Frances Willard, American educator, temperance reformer and women's suffragist
• September 29 - James Kimbrough Jones, U.S. Senator from Arkansas from 1885 to 1903
• October 20 - Augustus Octavius Bacon, U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1895 to 1914
• November 4 - Thomas M. Patterson, Ireland-born U.S. Senator from Colorado from 1901 to 1907
• December 5 - George Armstrong Custer, U.S. Army Officer and Cavalry Commander from Ohio from 1861 to 1876
• December 12 - Caroline Ingalls, American pioneer, mother of author Laura Ingalls Wilder

  Deaths

• January 14 - John Wesley Jarvis, portrait painter
• February 26 - Sybil Ludington, heroine of the American Revolutionary War
• April 1 - Benjamin Pierce, governor of New Hampshire from 1827 to 1828 and from 1829 to 1830, father of 14th President of the United States Franklin Pierce
• April 2 - Hezekiah Niles, magazine publisher
• April 5 - John Tipton, U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1832 to 1839
• April 22 - Samuel Smith, U.S. Senator from Maryland from 1822 to 1833
• May 11 - Thomas Cooper, political philosopher
• June 10 - Nathaniel Hale Pryor, sergeant in the Lewis and Clark Expedition
• July 16 - The Bowl, Cherokee chief, shot
• August 22 - Benjamin Lundy, abolitionist
• September 28 - William Dunlap, actor-manager, dramatist and painter
• December 4 - John Leamy, merchant