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← 1879 1878 1877 1880 in the United States → 1881 1882 1883
Decades:	1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s
See also:	History of the United States (1865–1918) Timeline of the history of the United States (1860-1899) List of years in the United States

Events from the year1880 in the United States.

• President:Rutherford B. Hayes (R-Ohio)
• Vice President:William A. Wheeler (R-New York)
• Chief Justice:Morrison Waite (Ohio)
• Speaker of the House of Representatives:Samuel J. Randall (D-Pennsylvania)
• Congress:46th

• February – The journalScience is first published, with financial backing fromThomas Edison.
• February 2 – The first electricstreetlight is installed inWabash, Indiana.
• March 31 –Wabash, Indiana becomes the first electrically lighted city in the world.
• May –Woman's Institute of Yonkers was established; it is Yonkers' oldest social service agency
• May 11 –Mussel Slough Tragedy: A land dispute between theSouthern Pacific Railroad and settlers inHanford, California, turns deadly when a gun battle breaks out, leaving 7 dead.
• May 13 – InMenlo Park, New Jersey,Thomas Edison performs the first test of hiselectric railway.
• May 30 –League of American Wheelmen is founded inNewport, Rhode Island.
• June 1 –United States Census is 50,155,783. More than 100,000 Chinese men and 3,000 Chinese women are living in the western United States.
• August 1 –Rufus W. Cobb isreelected the 25thgovernor of Alabama defeatingJames Madison Pickens.
• September 30 – Amateur astronomerHenry Draper takes the first ever photograph of theOrion Nebula.
• October 6 – TheUniversity of Southern California opens its doors to 53 students and 10 faculty.
• October 15 – The first blizzard mentioned inLaura Ingalls Wilder'sThe Long Winter sweeps over the prairie inDakota Territory.
• November 2 –U.S. presidential election, 1880:James Garfield defeatsWinfield S. Hancock.
• November 4 – The firstcash register is patented byJames and John Ritty ofDayton, Ohio.
• November 22 –Vaudeville actressLillian Russell makes her debut atTony Pastor's Theatre inNew York City.

• TheDepartment of Scientific Temperance Instruction of theWomen's Christian Temperance Union is established.
• Charles Wesley Emerson founds the Boston Conservatory of Elocution, Oratory, and Dramatic Art, predecessor ofEmerson College.

• Gilded Age (1869–c. 1896)

• September 15 – TheChicago White Stockings clinch their SecondNational League pennant with a 5–2 win over theCincinnati Reds.

• January 6 –Tom Mix, Western film actor (d.1940)
• January 14 –Joseph Warren Beach, poet, novelist, critic and literary scholar (d.1957)
• January 20 –Walter W. Bacon, accountant and politician, 60thGovernor of Delaware (d.1962)
• January 26
  • Sylvia Ashton, silent film actress (d.1940)
  • Douglas MacArthur, general (d.1964)
• January 28 –Dorothy Donnelly, actress and lyricist (d.1928)
• January 29 –W. C. Fields, born William Claude Dukenfield, comic actor (d.1946)
• February –Maud E. Craig Sampson Williams, African American suffragist (d.1958)
• February 12 –John L. Lewis, labor union leader (d.1969)
• February 14 –Frederick J. Horne, admiral (d.1959)
• February 16 –Frank Burke, baseball player (d. 1946)
• February 19 –Arthur Shepherd, composer (d.1958)
• February 2 –Angelina Weld Grimke, African American lesbian journalist and poet (d. 1958)
• March 4 –Channing Pollock, playwright and critic (d. 1946)
• March 10 –Broncho Billy Anderson, Western film actor (d.1971)
• March 11 –Harry H. Laughlin,eugenicist (d.1943)
• March 28 –Louis Wolheim, character actor (d.1931)
• April 18 –Sam Crawford, baseball player (d.1968)
• May 6 –William Joseph Simmons, founder of the secondKu Klux Klan in 1915 (d.1945)
• June 4 –Clara Blandick, actress (d.1962)
• June 9 –William S. Pye, admiral (d.1959)
• June 11 –Jeannette Pickering Rankin, first woman elected to U.S. Congress (d.1973)
• June 17 –Carl Van Vechten, writer and photographer (d. 1964)
• June 21 –Arnold Gesell, developmental psychologist (d.1961)
• June 24 –Oswald Veblen, mathematician (d.1960)
• June 26 –Mitchell Lewis, actor (d.1956)
• June 27 –Helen Keller, campaigner for the deaf and blind (d. 1968)^[1]

• July 10 –Greye La Spina, born Fanny Greye Bragg, fiction writer (d. 1969)
• July 12 –Tod Browning, motion picture director, horror film pioneer (d.1962)
• July 26 –Jean Clemens, youngest child ofMark Twain (d.1909)
• July 30 –Robert R. McCormick, newspaper publisher (d.1955)
• August 2 –Arthur Dove, abstract painter (d. 1946)
• August 10
  • Robert L. Thornton, businessman, philanthropist and mayor of Dallas, Texas (d.1964)
  • Catherine Evans Whitener, textile manufacturer (d. 1964)
• August 12 –Christy Mathewson, baseball player (d.1925)
• August 22 –George Herriman, cartoonist (d.1944)
• September 14 –Archie Hahn, sprinter (d. 1955)
• September 12 –H. L. Mencken, journalist (d.1956)^[2]
• September 24 –Sarah Knauss,supercentenarian, all-time longest lived American (d.1999)
• October 4 –Damon Runyon, writer (d.1946)^[3]
• October 31 –A. J. Rosier, politician (d.1932)^[4]
• November 1 –Grantland Rice, sportswriter (d.1954)
• November 10 –Jacob Epstein, sculptor (d.1959 in the United Kingdom)
• November 12 –Harold Rainsford Stark, admiral (d.1972)
• December 4 –Garfield Wood, motorboat racer (d. 1971)
• December 24 –Johnny Gruelle, cartoonist and children's book author (d.1938)
• December 31 –George Marshall,United States Secretary of State, recipient of theNobel Peace Prize in 1953 (d. 1959)

• Eliza Grant, African American midwife^[5]
• Aunt Molly Jackson, folk singer and union activist (d.1960)

• January 1 –Morris Ketchum, financier (b.1796)
• January 8 – "Emperor Norton", eccentric (b. c.1818 in the United Kingdom)
• January 12 –Ellen Lewis Herndon Arthur, wife of future PresidentChester A. Arthur (b.1837)
• January 19 –James Westcott, U.S. Senator from Florida from 1845 to 1849, died inMontréal,Québec,Canada (b.1802)
• February 14 –Samuel G. Arnold, U.S. Senator from Rhode Island from 1862 to 1863 (b.1821)
• February 17 –James Lenox, bibliophile (b.1800)
• May 4 –Edward Clark, Confederate Governor of Texas (b.1815)
• May 8 –Jones Very, Transcendentalist essayist, poet, clergyman and mystic (born1813)
• June 12 –Albert G. Brown, U.S. Senator from Mississippi from 1854 to 1861 (b. 1813)
• June 13 –James A. Bayard Jr., U.S. Senator from Delaware from 1851 to 1864 (b.1799)
• June 17 –James B. Howell, U.S. Senator from Iowa from 1870 to 1871 (b.1816)
• June 28 –Texas Jack Omohundro, frontier scout, actor and cowboy (b.1846)
• July 7 –Lydia Maria Child, novelist and abolitionist (b.1802)
• July 21 –Hiram Walden, politician (b. 1800)
• August 9 –William Bigler, U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania from 1856 to 1861 (born1814)
• August 16 –Herschel Vespasian Johnson, United States Senator from Georgia from 1863 until 1865. (born1812)
• August 19 –James Seddon, 4thConfederate States Secretary of War (born1815)
• August 24 –Ouray, Ute leader (b. c.1833)
• September 19 –Lafayette S. Foster, U.S. Senator from Connecticut from 1855 to 1867 (born1806)
• October –Victorio, Chiricahua Apache chief (b. c.1825)
• November 3 -Solon Robinson, founder ofCrown Point, Indiana (born1803)
• November 9 –Edwin Drake, first American to successfully drill for oil (b.1819)
• November 11 –Lucretia Mott, abolitionist and women's rights activist (born1793)
• December 20 –Gaspar Tochman, lawyer and Confederate colonel (b. 1797 in Poland)
• December 30 –Epes Sargent, editor, poet and playwright (b. 1813)

• Timeline of United States history (1860–1899)

• Media related to1880 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons

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