1849 in the United States

Incumbents

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

• President: James K. Polk , Zachary Taylor
• Vice President: George M. Dallas , Millard Fillmore
• Chief Justice: Roger B. Taney
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Robert Charles Winthrop , Howell Cobb
• Congress: 30th, 31st

  Governors

Lieutenant Governors

Events

• January 23 - Elizabeth Blackwell is awarded her M.D. by the Medical Institute of Geneva, New York, thus becoming the United States' first woman doctor.
• February 14 - In New York City, James Knox Polk becomes the first sitting President of the United States to have his photograph taken.
• February 28 - Regular steamboat service from the west to the east coast of the United States begins with the arrival of the SS California in San Francisco Bay. The California leaves New York Harbor on October 6, 1848, rounds Cape Horn at the tip of South America, and arrives at San Francisco, California after the 4-month-21-day journey.
• March 3
• *Minnesota Territory is established.
• *The United States Department of the Interior is established.
• *The U.S. Congress passes the Gold Coinage Act allowing the minting of gold coins.
• March 4 - Zachary Taylor becomes the 12th President of the United States, but refuses to be sworn in office on a Sabbath. Urban legend holds that David Rice Atchison, President pro tempore of the United States Senate was President de jure for a single day.
• March 5 - President Zachary Taylor is sworn into office.
• May 3 – The Mississippi River levee at Sauvé's Crevasse breaks, flooding much of New Orleans, Louisiana.
• May 20 – Astor Place Riot occurs in Manhattan.
• June 6 - Fort Worth, Texas is founded.
• September 1 - The first segment of the Pennsylvania Railroad, from Lewistown, Pennsylvania to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, opens for service.
• November - Austin College receives a charter in Huntsville.
• November 13 - The Constitution of California is ratified by the electorate.
• Undated - Pfizer is founded by cousins Charles Pfizer and Charles F. Erhart in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, as a manufacturer of fine chemicals.
• 1849; Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ends the Mexican-American War.

• California Gold Rush

  Births

• January 12 - Murphy J. Foster, U.S. Senator from Louisiana from 1901 to 1913
• January 29 - Newton C. Blanchard, U.S. Senator from Louisiana from 1894 to 1897
• March 2 - Robert Means Thompson, naval officer
• March 7 - Luther Burbank, biologist
• March 10 - Mary Evelyn Hitchcock, author and explorer
• April 3 - Walter Guion, U.S. Senator from Louisiana in 1918
• April 17 - William R. Day, politician and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
• April 19 - John Uri Lloyd, pharmacist and science fiction author
• April 30 - Jennie Tuttle Hobart, Second Lady of the United States as wife of Garret Hobart
• May 19 - John Hubbard, admiral
• June 30 - William Joseph Deboe, U.S. from Kentucky from 1897 to 1903
• July 22 - Emma Lazarus, poet
• August 9 - John P. Young, managing editor of the San Francisco Chronicle
• August 12 - Abbott Handerson Thayer, painter, naturalist and teacher
• August 23 - William Stanley West, U.S. Senator from Georgia in 1914
• September 3 - Sarah Orne Jewett, Maine fiction writer
• September 18 - Martha Place, murderer
• October 3 - Jeannette Leonard Gilder, author and editor
• October 7 - James Whitcomb Riley, dialect poet
• November 19 - Grace Denio Litchfield, poet and novelist
• December 6
• * Jennie Anderson Froiseth, women's rights campaigner
• * Charles S. Thomas, U.S. Senator from Colorado from 1913 to 1921
• December 12 - William Kissam Vanderbilt, railway magnate
• December 19 - Henry Clay Frick, industrialist and art collector
• December 20
• * John W. Kern, U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1911 to 1917
• * Raymond P. Rodgers, admiral
• Ellen Eglin, inventor
• Emma Curtis Hopkins, spiritual writer

  Deaths

• January 30 - Jonathan Alder, settler
• March 17 - Ann Gerry, Second Lady of the United States from 1813 to 1814 as wife of Elbridge Gerry
• July 12 - Dolley Madison, First Lady of the United States from 1809 to 1817 as wife of James Madison
• June 15 - James K. Polk, 11th President of the United States from 1845 to 1849
• July 30 - Jacob Perkins, inventor, mechanical engineer, and physicist
• August 23 - Edward Hicks, folk painter and Quaker preacher
• October 7 - Edgar Allan Poe, author, poet, editor and literary critic
• October 22 - William Miller, Baptist preacher, leader of the Second Advent Movement
• Robert Cary Long, Jr., architect working in Baltimore