1839 in the United States explained
Events from the year 1839 in the United States.
Incumbents
James K. Polk (D-Tennessee) (until March 4)
Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter (W-Virginia) (starting December 16)
Events
- February 11 - The University of Missouri is established in Columbia, Missouri, becoming the first public university west of the Mississippi River.
- March 5 - Longwood University is founded in Farmville, Virginia.
- March 7 - Baltimore City College, the third public high school in the United States, is established in Baltimore, Maryland.
- March 23 - The Boston Morning Post first records the use of "OK".
- August 8 - The Beta Theta Pi fraternity is founded in Oxford, Ohio.
- September 9 - In the Great Fire of Mobile, Alabama hundreds of buildings are burned.
- October - Robert Cornelius takes the first photographic self portrait in the United States.
- November 11 - The Virginia Military Institute is founded in Lexington, Virginia.
- November 27 - In Boston, Massachusetts, the American Statistical Association is founded.
Undated
Ongoing
Births
- February 9 - Laura Redden Searing, deaf poet and journalist (died 1923)
- March 9 - Phoebe Knapp, hymn writer (d. 1908)
- April 7 - David Baird, Ireland-born U.S. Senator from New Jersey from 1918 to 1919 (died 1927)
- July 8 - John D. Rockefeller, oil industry business magnate and philanthropist (died 1937)
- August 1 - Middleton P. Barrow, U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1882 to 1883 (died 1903)
- August 23 - George Clement Perkins, U.S. Senator from California from 1893 to 1915 (died 1923)
- August 26 - Hernando Money, U.S. Senator from Mississippi from 1897 to 1911 (died 1912)
- September 2 - Henry George, writer, politician and political economist (died 1897)
- September 10 - Charles Sanders Peirce, philosopher, logician, scientist, and founder of pragmatism (died 1912)
- 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 (died 1925)
- September 28 - Frances Willard, American educator, temperance reformer and women's suffragist (died 1898)
- September 29 - James Kimbrough Jones, U.S. Senator from Arkansas from 1885 to 1903 (died 1908)
- October 20 - Augustus Octavius Bacon, U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1895 to 1914 (died 1914)
- November 4 - Thomas M. Patterson, Ireland-born U.S. Senator from Colorado from 1901 to 1907 (died 1916)
- December 5 - George Armstrong Custer, U.S. Army Officer and Cavalry Commander from Ohio from 1861 to 1876 (died 1876)
- December 12 - Caroline Ingalls (b. Caroline Lake Quiner), American pioneer, mother of author Laura Ingalls Wilder (died 1924)
Deaths
- January 14 - John Wesley Jarvis, portrait painter (born c.1781 in Great Britain)
- February 26 - Sybil Ludington, heroine of the American Revolutionary War (born 1761)
- April 1 - Benjamin Pierce, governor of New Hampshire from 1827 to 1828 and from 1829 to 1830, father of the 14th president of the United States, Franklin Pierce (born 1757)
- April 2 - Hezekiah Niles, magazine publisher (born 1777)
- April 5 - John Tipton, U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1832 to 1839 (born 1786)
- April 22 - Samuel Smith, U.S. Senator from Maryland from 1822 to 1833 (born 1752)
- May 11 - Thomas Cooper, political philosopher (born 1759)
- June 10 - Nathaniel Hale Pryor, sergeant in the Lewis and Clark Expedition (born 1772)
- July 16 - The Bowl (Di'wali), Cherokee chief, shot (born c.1756)
- August 22 - Benjamin Lundy, abolitionist (born 1789)
- September 28 - William Dunlap, actor-manager, dramatist and painter (born 1766)
- December 4 - John Leamy, merchant (born 1757 in Ireland)
See also
