1874 in the United States
Events from the year 1874 in the United States.Incumbents
Federal Government">Federal government of the United States">Federal Government
Lieutenant Governors
Events
- January 1 – New York City annexes The Bronx.
- February 21 – The Oakland Daily Tribune newspaper is first publishes its first.
- March 18 – Hawaii signs a treaty with the United States granting exclusive trading rights.
- March – The Young Men's Hebrew Association in Manhattan is founded.
- May 20 – Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive a U.S. patent for blue jeans with copper rivets. The price is $13.50 per dozen.
- July 1
- *Philadelphia Zoo opens, the first public zoo in the U.S.
- *Four-year-old Charley Ross, America's first major kidnapping for ransom victim, is taken from his home in Philadelphia.
- *The Sholes and Glidden typewriter, with cylindrical platen and QWERTY keyboard, is first marketed.
- November 4 – Democrats regain the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time since 1860.
- November 7 – Harper's Weekly publishes a political cartoon by Thomas Nast considered the first important use of an elephant as a symbol for the Republican Party.
- November 9 – The Sigma Kappa sorority is founded at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, by Mary Caffrey Low, Elizabeth Gorham Hoag, Ida Fuller, Frances Mann, and Louise Helen Coburn.
- November 11 – The Gamma Phi Beta sorority is founded at Syracuse University. This is the first women's Greek letter organization to be called a sorority.
- November 24 - Inventor Joseph Glidden patents barbed wire.
- November 25 – The United States Greenback Party is established as a "National Independent" political party, composed primarily of farmers financially hurt by the Panic of 1873.
- November 28 – King Kalākaua's 1874–75 state visit to the United States begins when the ship carrying him from Hawaii, USS Benicia, docks in San Francisco.
Undated
- The San Diego Natural History Museum is founded.
- Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, is completed.
Ongoing
- Reconstruction era
- Gilded Age
- Depression of 1873–79
Births
- January 4 - John W. Thomas, U.S. Senator from Idaho from 1928 to 1933 and from 1940 to 1945
- January 7 - M. M. Logan, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1931 to 1939
- January 9 - Helen Tufts Bailie, social reformer and activist
- January 29 - John D. Rockefeller Jr., financier and philanthropist, son of John D. Rockefeller
- April 5 - Jesse H. Jones, entrepreneur, 9th United States Secretary of Commerce
- April 16 - Frederick Van Nuys, U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1933 to 1944
- March 5 - Daniel O. Hastings, U.S. Senator from Delaware from 1928 to 1937
- March 26 - Robert Frost, poet
- March 29 - Lou Henry Hoover, First Lady of the United States as wife of Herbert Hoover
- May 20 - Augustine Lonergan, U.S. Senator from Connecticut from 1933 to 1939
- July 1 - Edward P. Costigan, U.S. Senator from Colorado from 1931 to 1937
- August 10
- * Herbert Hoover, 31st President of the United States from 1929 to 1933
- * Tod Sloan, jockey
- September 13 - Henry F. Ashurst, U.S. Senator from Arizona from 1912 to 1941
- December 4 - Edwin S. Broussard, U.S. Senator from Louisiana from 1921 to 1933
Deaths
- January 7 - John Burton Thompson, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1853 to 1859
- January 17 - Chang and Eng Bunker, Thai-American conjoined twin brothers
- February 24 - John Bachman, Lutheran minister, social activist and naturalist
- March 8 - Millard Fillmore, 13th President of the U.S. from 1850 to 1853, and 12th Vice President of the U.S. from 1849 to 1850
- March 11 - Charles Sumner, U.S. Senator from Massachusetts from 1851 to 1874
- June 8 - Cochise, one of the greatest leaders of the Apache Indians, dies on the Chiricahua reservation in southeastern Arizona
- October 6 - Samuel M. Kier, industrialist
- November 20 - Jackson Morton, U.S. Senator from Florida from 1849 to 1855
- Full date unknown
- * Paul Jennings, slave of James Madison, writer
- * Eliza Seymour Lee, pastry chef and restaurateur
