1894 in the United States

1894 in the United States
Years:	1891 1892 1893 – 1894 – 1895 1896 1897
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44 stars (1891–96)
Timeline of United States history History of the United States (1865–1918)

Events from the year 1894 in the United States.

Incumbents

Federal Government

• President: Grover Cleveland (D-New York)
• Vice President: Adlai E. Stevenson I (D-Illinois)
• Chief Justice: Melville Fuller (Illinois)
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Charles Frederick Crisp (D-Georgia)
• Congress: 53rd

Events

• January 9 – New England Telephone and Telegraph installs the first battery-operated telephone switchboard, in Lexington, Massachusetts.
• March 12 – Coca-Cola is sold in bottles for the first time.
• March 25 – Coxey's Army, the first significant American protest march, departs from Massillon, Ohio for Washington D.C.
• May 1
  • Coxey's Army arrives in Washington, D.C.
  • The May Day Riots of 1894 break out in Cleveland, Ohio.
• May 11 – Pullman Strike: Three thousand Pullman Palace Car Company workers go on a "wildcat" (without union approval) strike to protest lowered wages without an equivalent reduction in expenses charged in the company town of Pullman, Chicago.
• July – A fire at the site of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago destroys most of the remaining buildings.
• July 4 – The short-lived Republic of Hawaii is proclaimed by Sanford B. Dole.
• September 1 – Great Hinckley Fire: A forest fire in Hinckley, Minnesota kills more than 450 people.
• September 4 – In New York City, 12,000 tailors strike against sweatshop working conditions.
• November 5 – West Palm Beach, Florida is incorporated as a city.

Undated

• Milton S. Hershey establishes the Hershey Chocolate Company in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
• The Society of Beaux-Arts Architects is founded.
• The National Society of Pershing Rifles is founded at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
• Chatham Episcopal Institute (modern-day Chatham Hall) is founded in Chatham, Virginia.
• Frederick W. Tamblyn founds Tamblyn Studio & School of Penmanship which later becomes Ziller of Kansas City, the oldest calligraphy studio in the U.S.
• National Civic League established.^[1]

Ongoing

• Gilded Age (1869–c. 1896)
• Gay Nineties (1890–1899)
• Progressive Era (1890s–1920s)
• Panic of 1893 (1893–1894)

Births

• January 2 – Robert Nathan, poet and novelist (died 1985)
• January 20 – Walter Piston, composer (died 1976)
• January 31
  • Percy Helton, screen actor (died 1971)
  • Isham Jones, bandleader and composer (died 1956)
• February 1
  • John Ford, film director (died 1973)
  • Dick Merrill, aviation pioneer (died 1982)
• February 3 – Norman Rockwell, painter and illustrator (died 1978)
• February 14 – Jack Benny, actor and comedian (died 1974)
• February 18 – Paul Williams, architect (died 1980)
• February 22 – Enid Markey, actress (died 1981)
• February 25 – Frank P. Briggs, U.S. Senator from Missouri from 1945 to 1947 (died 1992)
• February 28 – Ben Hecht, playwright and film writer (died 1964)
• March 14 – Osa Johnson (née Leighty), adventurer and filmmaker, wife of Martin Johnson (died 1953)
• March 17 – Paul Green, playwright (died 1981)
• March 19 – Moms Mabley, African American comedian (died 1975)
• March 31 – Francis T. Maloney, U.S. Senator from Connecticut from 1935 to 1945 (died 1945)
• April 3 – Dooley Wilson, African American pianist and singer (died 1953)
• April 6 – Gertrude Baines, supercentenarian (died 2009)
• April 15 – Bessie Smith, African American blues singer (died 1937)
• April 19 – Elizabeth Dilling, right-wing political activist (died 1966)
• May 5 – August Dvorak, educational psychologist (died 1975)
• May 11 – Martha Graham, dancer and choreographer (died 1991)
• May 15 – Eddie Stumpf, baseball player (died 1978)
• May 16 – Walter Yust, encyclopædia editor (died 1960)
• May 27 – Dashiell Hammett, detective fiction writer (died 1961)
• May 31 – Fred Allen, comedian (died 1956)
• June 5 – James Glenn Beall, U.S. Senator from Maryland from 1953 to 1965 (died 1971)
• June 23 – Alfred Kinsey, biologist, professor of entomology and zoology and sexologist, founder of the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University (Bloomington) in 1947 (died 1956)
• June 28 – Arthur Dewey Struble, admiral (died 1983)
• July 9 – Phelps Putnam, poet (died 1948)
• August 3 – Harry Heilmann, baseball player (died 1951)
• August 16 – George Meany, labor leader (died 1980)
• August 29 – Henry Dworshak, U.S. Senator from Idaho from 1946 to 1949 and from 1949 to 1962 (died 1962)
• September 6 – Howard Pease, adventure novelist (died 1974)
• September 7 – George Waggner, film director, producer and actor (died 1984)
• September 12 – Billy Gilbert, comedian and actor (died 1971)
• September 24 – Harry B. Liversedge, general (died 1951)
• September 25 – J. Mayo Williams, African American blues music producer (died 1980])
• September 26 – Vaughn De Leath, crooner, "The Original Radio Girl" (died 1943)
• October 2 – Thomas L. Sprague, admiral (died 1972)
• October 4 – Patrick V. McNamara, U.S. Senator from Michigan from 1955 to 1966 (died 1966)
• October 7 – Del Lord, film director (died 1970)
• October 9 – Ernest McFarland, U.S. Senator from Arizona from 1941 to 1953 (died 1984)
• October 14 – E. E. Cummings, poet and painter (died 1962)
• October 18 – H. L. Davis, fiction writer (died 1960)
• November 23 – Andrew Frank Schoeppel, U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1949 to 1962 (died 1962)
• November 26 – Norbert Wiener, mathematician (died 1964)
• November 28 – Henry Hazlitt, journalist and economist (died 1993)
• December 5 – Philip K. Wrigley, business and sports executive (died 1977)
• December 8
  • E. C. Segar, cartoonist, creator of Popeye (died 1938)
  • James Thurber, cartoonist and humorous writer (died 1961)
• December 15 – Felix Stump, admiral (died 1972)
• December 17 – Arthur Fiedler, orchestral conductor (died 1979)
• December 26 – Jean Toomer (Nathan Eugene Pinchback Toomer), African American poet and novelist (died 1967)
• December 29 – J. Lister Hill, U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1938 to 1969 (died 1984)

Deaths

• January 15 – Henry Mower Rice, U.S. Senator from Minnesota from 1858 to 1863 (born 1816)
• February 4 – Morton S. Wilkinson, U.S. Senator from Minnesota from 1859 to 1865 (born 1819)
• February 28 – James W. McDill, U.S. Senator from Iowa from 1881 to 1883 (born 1834)
• March 2
  • Jubal Early, Confederate general (born 1816)
  • William H. Osborn, railroad tycoon (born 1820)
• March 3 – Ned Williamson, baseball player (born 1857)
• March 26 – Alfred H. Colquitt, U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1883 to 1894 (born 1824)
• March 28 – George Ticknor Curtis, author, lawyer and historian (born 1812)
• April 7 – Benjamin Franklin King, Jr., poet and humorist (born 1857)
• April 15 – James Harvey, U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1874 to 1877 (born 1833)
• April 30 – Francis B. Stockbridge, U.S. Senator from Michigan from 1887 to 1894 (born 1826)
• June 17 – William Hart, landscape painter (born 1823 in Scotland)
• June 20 – Bishop W. Perkins, U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1892 to 1893 (born 1841)
• June 24 – George Peter Alexander Healy, American portrait painter (born 1813)
• August 15 – Arthur Rotch, architect (born 1850)
• October 7 – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., physician and writer (born 1809)
• September 1
  • Boston Corbett, England-born Union Army soldier who shot and killed Abraham Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth (born 1832)
  • Samuel J. Kirkwood, U.S. Senator from Iowa from 1881 to 1882 (born 1813)
• November 30 – Joseph E. Brown, U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1880 to 1891 (born 1821)
• December 19 – James L. Alcorn, U.S. Senator from Mississippi from 1871 to 1877 (born 1816)

See also

• List of American films of the 1890s

References

External links

• Media related to 1894 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons