← 1838 1837 1836 1839 in the United States → 1840 1841 1842
Decades:	1810s 1820s 1830s 1840s 1850s
See also:	History of the United States (1789–1849) Timeline of the history of the United States (1820-1859) List of years in the United States

Events from the year1839 in the United States.

• President:Martin Van Buren (D-New York)
• Vice President:Richard M. Johnson (D-Kentucky)
• Chief Justice:Roger B. Taney (Maryland)
• Speaker of the House of Representatives:

James K. Polk (D-Tennessee) (until March 4)

Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter (W-Virginia) (starting December 16)

• Congress:25th (until March 4),26th (starting March 4)

• February 11 – TheUniversity of Missouri is established inColumbia, Missouri, becoming the first public university west of theMississippi River.
• March 5 –Longwood University is founded inFarmville,Virginia.
• March 7 –Baltimore City College, the third public high school in the United States, is established inBaltimore,Maryland.
• March 23 – TheBoston Morning Post first records the use of "OK".
• August 8 – TheBeta Theta Pi fraternity is founded inOxford, Ohio.
• October –Robert Cornelius takes the first photographic self portrait in the United States.
• October 7 – Much of downtownMobile, Alabama is destroyed by a wind-fueled fire.^[1]
• November 11 – TheVirginia Military Institute is founded in Lexington,Virginia.
• November 27 – InBoston, Massachusetts, theAmerican Statistical Association is founded.

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

• Second Seminole War (1835–1842)

• February 9 –Laura Redden Searing, deaf poet and journalist (died1923)
• March 9 –Phoebe Knapp, hymn writer (d.1908)
• April 7 –David Baird, Ireland-born U.S. Senator from New Jersey from 1918 to 1919 (died1927)
• July 8 –John D. Rockefeller, oil industry business magnate and philanthropist (died1937)
• August 1 –Middleton P. Barrow, U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1882 to 1883 (died1903)
• August 23 –George Clement Perkins, U.S. Senator from California from 1893 to 1915 (died1923)
• August 26 –Hernando Money, U.S. Senator from Mississippi from 1897 to 1911 (died1912)
• September 2 –Henry George, writer, politician and political economist (died1897)
• September 10 –Charles Sanders Peirce, philosopher, logician, scientist, and founder of pragmatism (died1912)
• September 13 –Thomas J. Mastin, Confederate captain and lawyer (d.1861)
• September 18 –William J. McConnell, U.S. Senator from Idaho from 1890 to 1891 (died1925)
• September 28 –Frances Willard, American educator, temperance reformer and women's suffragist (died1898)
• September 29 –James Kimbrough Jones, U.S. Senator from Arkansas from 1885 to 1903 (died1908)
• October 20 –Augustus Octavius Bacon, U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1895 to 1914 (died1914)
• November 4 –Thomas M. Patterson, Ireland-born U.S. Senator from Colorado from 1901 to 1907 (died1916)
• December 5 –George Armstrong Custer, U.S. Army Officer and Cavalry Commander from Ohio from 1861 to 1876 (died1876)
• December 12 –Caroline Ingalls (b. Caroline Lake Quiner), American pioneer, mother of authorLaura Ingalls Wilder (died1924)

• January 14 –John Wesley Jarvis, portrait painter (born c.1781 in Great Britain)
• February 26 –Sybil Ludington, heroine of theAmerican Revolutionary War (born1761)
• April 1 –Benjamin Pierce, governor ofNew Hampshire from 1827 to 1828 and from 1829 to 1830, father of the 14thpresident of the United States,Franklin Pierce (born1757)
• April 2 –Hezekiah Niles, magazine publisher (born1777)
• April 5 –John Tipton, U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1832 to 1839 (born1786)
• April 22 –Samuel Smith, U.S. Senator from Maryland from 1822 to 1833 (born1752)
• May 11 –Thomas Cooper, political philosopher (born1759)
• June 10 –Nathaniel Hale Pryor, sergeant in theLewis and Clark Expedition (born1772)
• July 16 –The Bowl (Di'wali), Cherokee chief, shot (born c.1756)
• August 22 –Benjamin Lundy, abolitionist (born1789)
• September 28 –William Dunlap, actor-manager, dramatist and painter (born1766)
• December 4 –John Leamy, merchant (born1757 in Ireland)

• Timeline of United States history (1820–1859)

• Media related to1839 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons

• 1839 in the United States
• 1830s in the United States
• 1839 by country
• 1839 in North America
• Years of the 19th century in the United States

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use mdy dates from February 2023
• Use American English from February 2023
• All Wikipedia articles written in American English
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