1901 in the United States

← 1900 1899 1898 1901 in the United States → 1902 1903 1904
Decades:	1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s
See also:	History of the United States (1865–1918) Timeline of United States history (1900–1929) List of years in the United States

Events from the year 1901 in the United States.

Incumbents

Federal Government

• President: William McKinley (R-Ohio) (until September 14), Theodore Roosevelt (R-New York) (starting September 14)
• Vice President:
  • until March 4: vacant
  • March 4–September 14: Theodore Roosevelt (R-New York)
  • starting September 14: vacant
• Chief Justice: Melville Fuller (Illinois)
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: David B. Henderson (R-Iowa)
• Congress: 56th (until March 4), 57th (starting March 4)

Governors and Lieutenant Governors

Governors Governor of Alabama: William J. Samford (Democratic) (until June 11), William D. Jelks (Democratic) (starting June 11) Governor of Arkansas: Daniel Webster Jones (Democratic) (until January 8), Jeff Davis (Democratic) (starting January 8) Governor of California: Henry Gage (Republican) Governor of Colorado: Charles Spalding Thomas (Democratic) (until January 8), James Bradley Orman (Democratic) (starting January 8) Governor of Connecticut: George E. Lounsbury (Republican) (until January 9), George P. McLean (Republican) (starting January 9) Governor of Delaware: Ebe W. Tunnell (Democratic) (until January 15), John Hunn (Republican) (starting January 15) Governor of Florida: William D. Bloxham (Democratic) (until January 8), William Sherman Jennings (Democratic) (starting January 8) Governor of Georgia: Allen D. Candler (Democratic) Governor of Idaho: Frank Steunenberg (Democratic) (until January 7), Frank W. Hunt (Democratic) (starting January 7) Governor of Illinois: John Riley Tanner (Republican) (until January 14), Richard Yates, Jr. (Republican) (starting January 14) Governor of Indiana: James A. Mount (Republican) (until January 14), Winfield T. Durbin (Republican) (starting January 14) Governor of Iowa: Leslie M. Shaw (Republican) Governor of Kansas: William E. Stanley (Republican) Governor of Kentucky: J. C. W. Beckham (Democratic) Governor of Louisiana: William Wright Heard (Democratic) Governor of Maine: Llewellyn Powers (Republican) (until January 2), John Fremont Hill (Republican) (starting January 2) Governor of Maryland: John Walter Smith (Democratic) Governor of Massachusetts: Winthrop Murray Crane (Republican) Governor of Michigan: Hazen S. Pingree (Republican) (until January 1), Aaron T. Bliss (Republican) (starting January 1) Governor of Minnesota: John Lind (Democratic) (until January 7), Samuel Rinnah Van Sant (Republican) (starting January 7) Governor of Mississippi: Andrew H. Longino (Democratic) Governor of Missouri: Lon Vest Stephens (Democratic) (until January 14), Alexander Monroe Dockery (Democratic) (starting January 14) Governor of Montana: Robert Burns Smith (Democratic) (until January 7), Joseph Toole (Democratic) (starting January 7) Governor of Nebraska: until January 3: William A. Poynter (Democratic) January 3-May 1: Charles Henry Dietrich (Republican) starting May 1: Ezra P. Savage (Republican) Governor of Nevada: Reinhold Sadler (Silver) Governor of New Hampshire: Frank W. Rollins (Republican) (until January 3), Chester B. Jordan (Republican) (starting January 3) Governor of New Jersey: Foster MacGowan Voorhees (Republican) Governor of New York: Benjamin Barker Odell, Jr. (Republican) (starting January 1) Governor of North Carolina: Daniel Lindsay Russell (Republican) (until January 15), Charles Brantley Aycock (Democratic) (starting January 15) Governor of North Dakota: Frederick B. Fancher (Republican) (until January 10), Frank White (Republican) (starting January 10) Governor of Ohio: George K. Nash (Republican) Governor of Oregon: T. T. Geer (Republican) Governor of Pennsylvania: William A. Stone (Republican) Governor of Rhode Island: William Gregory (Republican) (until December 16), Charles D. Kimball (Republican) (starting December 16) Governor of South Carolina: Miles Benjamin McSweeney (Democratic) Governor of South Dakota: Andrew E. Lee (Populist) (until January 8), Charles N. Herreid (Republican) (starting January 8) Governor of Tennessee: Benton McMillin (Democratic) Governor of Texas: Joseph D. Sayers (Democratic) Governor of Utah: Heber Manning Wells (Republican) Governor of Vermont: William W. Stickney (Republican) Governor of Virginia: James Hoge Tyler (Democratic) Governor of Washington: John Rankin Rogers (Populist)/(Democratic) (until December 26), Henry McBride (Republican) (starting December 26) Governor of West Virginia: George W. Atkinson (Republican) (until March 4), Albert B. White (Republican) (starting March 4) Governor of Wisconsin: Edward Scofield (Republican) (until January 7), Robert M. La Follette, Sr. (Republican) (starting January 7) Governor of Wyoming: DeForest Richards (Republican) Lieutenant Governors Lieutenant Governor of California: Jacob H. Neff (Republican) Lieutenant Governor of Colorado: Francis Patrick Carney (Populist) (until January 8), David Courtney Coates (Democratic) (starting January 8) Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut: Lyman A. Mills (Republican) (until January 9), Edwin O. Keeler (Republican) (starting January 9) Lieutenant Governor of Delaware: Philip L. Cannon (Republican) (starting January 15) Lieutenant Governor of Idaho: J. H. Hutchinson (Democratic) (until January 7), Thomas F. Terrell (Democratic) (starting January 7) Lieutenant Governor of Illinois: William Northcott (Republican) Lieutenant Governor of Indiana: William S. Haggard (Republican) (until January 14), Newton W. Gilbert (Republican) (starting January 14) Lieutenant Governor of Iowa: James C. Milliman (Republican) Lieutenant Governor of Kansas: Harry E. Richter (Republican) Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky: vacant Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana: Albert Estopinal (Democratic) Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts: John L. Bates (Republican) Lieutenant Governor of Michigan: Orrin W. Robinson (Republican) Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota: Lyndon A. Smith (Republican) Lieutenant Governor of Mississippi: James T. Harrison (Democratic) Lieutenant Governor of Missouri: August Bolte (Democratic) (until January 14), John Adams Lee (Democratic) (starting January 14) Lieutenant Governor of Montana: Archibald E. Spriggs (political party unknown) (until month and day unknown), Frank G. Higgins (political party unknown) (starting month and day unknown) Lieutenant Governor of Nebraska: until January 3: Edward A. Gilbert (Republican) January 3-May 1: Ezra P. Savage (Republican) starting May 1: vacant Lieutenant Governor of Nevada: James R. Judge (political party unknown) Lieutenant Governor of New York: Timothy L. Woodruff (Republican) Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina: Charles A. Reynolds (Republican) (until January 15), Wilfred D. Turner (Democratic) (starting January 15) Lieutenant Governor of North Dakota: vacant (until January 10), David Bartlett (Republican) (starting January 10) Lieutenant Governor of Ohio: John A. Caldwell (Republican) Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania: John P. S. Gobin (Republican) Lieutenant Governor of Rhode Island: Charles D. Kimball (Republican) (until December 16), vacant (starting December 16) Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina: Robert B. Scarborough (Democratic) (until January 15), James H. Tillman (Democratic) (starting January 15) Lieutenant Governor of South Dakota: John T. Kean (Republican) (until January 8), George W. Snow (Republican) (starting January 8) Lieutenant Governor of Tennessee: Seid Waddell (Democratic) (until month and day unknown), Newton H. White (Democratic) (starting month and day unknown) Lieutenant Governor of Texas: James Browning (Democratic) Lieutenant Governor of Vermont: Martin F. Allen (Republican) Lieutenant Governor of Virginia: Edward Echols (Democratic) Lieutenant Governor of Washington: until January 14: Thurston Daniels (Populist) January 14-December 26: Henry McBride (Republican) starting December 26: vacant Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin: Jesse Stone (Republican)

Events

January 10: Oil in Texas.

March 4: Theodore Roosevelt becomes the 25th U.S. Vice President

January–March

• January 1 – Pentecostalism is born, at a prayer meeting at Bethel Bible College in Topeka, Kansas.
• January 3 – Census Commissioner predicts a US population of at least 300 million by 2001
• January 5 – Typhoid fever breaks out in a Seattle jail, the first of two typhoid outbreaks in the USA during the year.
• January 7 – Alferd Packer is released from prison in the United States after serving 18 years for cannibalism.
• January 10 – In the first great Texas gusher, oil is discovered at Spindletop in Beaumont, Texas.
• January 22 – The Grand Opera House in Cincinnati, Ohio, is destroyed in a fire.
• January 28 – Baseball's American League declares itself a Major League.
• February 20 – The Hawaii Territory Legislature convenes for the first time.
• February 25 – U.S. Steel, the first billion-dollar corporation and at some time the world's largest producer of steel, is incorporated by industrialist J. P. Morgan.
• March 2
  • The U.S. Congress passes the Platt Amendment, limiting the autonomy of Cuba as a condition for the withdrawal of American troops.
  • The Carnegie Steel Company with the Illinois Steel Company & The National Steel Company merged to form the United States Steel Corporation.
• March 4 – President William McKinley begins his second term. Theodore Roosevelt sworn in as Vice President of the United States.

April–June

May 3: The Great Fire of 1901 in Jacksonville begins.

• April 25 – New York State becomes the first to require automobile license plates.
• May – Monte Ne health resort opens in the Ozarks.
• May 3 – The Great Fire of 1901 in Jacksonville, Florida, begins.
• May 17 – The U.S. stock market crashes for the first time.
• May 27 – The Edison Storage Battery Company is founded in New Jersey.
• May 28 – Cherry v. Des Moines Leader is decided in the Iowa Supreme Court, upholding the right to publish critical reviews.
• June 12 – Cuba becomes a U.S. protectorate.

July–September

September 6: President McKinley is shot.

September 14: "Teddy" Roosevelt succeeds McKinley as the 26th U.S. President.

• June 22 to July 31 – The worst heat wave in U.S. history until the 1930s, affecting most areas east of the 100th meridian, is estimated to have killed over 9,500 people.
• July 24 – O. Henry is released from prison in Columbus, Ohio after serving 3 years for embezzlement from the First National Bank in Austin, Texas.
• August 10 – U.S. Steel recognition strike of 1901: Members of the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers begin a strike against United States Steel Corporation after failing to reach a settlement of their demands, and 14,000 employees walk off of the job.
• September 2 – Vice President Theodore Roosevelt utters the famous phrase, "Speak softly and carry a big stick" at the Minnesota State Fair.
• September 5 – The National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (later renamed Minor League Baseball) is formed in Chicago.
• September 6 – American anarchist Leon Czolgosz shoots President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. McKinley dies 8 days later.
• September 14 – Vice President Theodore Roosevelt becomes the 26th President of the United States, upon the death of President William McKinley.
• September 26 – The body of President Abraham Lincoln is exhumed and reinterred in concrete several feet thick.

October–December

• October 4 – The American yacht Columbia defeats the Irish Shamrock in the America's Cup yachting race.
• October 16 – President Theodore Roosevelt invites African American leader Booker T. Washington to the White House. The American South reacts angrily to the visit, and racial violence increases in the region.
• October 23 – Yale University celebrates its bicentennial.
• October 24 – Michigan schoolteacher Annie Taylor goes down Niagara Falls in a barrel and survives.
• October 29 – In Amherst, New Hampshire, nurse Jane Toppan is arrested for murdering the Davis family of Boston with an overdose of morphine.
• October 29 – Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of William McKinley, is executed by electrocution.
• November 1 – Sigma Phi Epsilon is founded in Richmond, Virginia.
• November 15 – The Alpha Sigma Alpha fraternity is founded at Longwood University.
• November 28 – The new state constitution of Alabama requires voters to have passed literacy tests.
• December 3 – President Theodore Roosevelt delivers a 20,000-word speech to the House of Representatives asking Congress to curb the power of trusts "within reasonable limits."

Undated

• The Intercollegiate Prohibition Association is established in Chicago.
• Force (cereal) first produced.

Ongoing

• Progressive Era (1890s–1920s)
• Lochner era (c. 1897–c. 1937)
• Philippine–American War (1899–1902)

Births

• January 2 – Bob Marshall, wilderness activist, founder of The Wilderness Society (died 1939)
• January 3 – Henrietta Bingham, journalist, newspaper executive, horse-breeder and anglophile (died 1968)
• January 4 – Raoul Berger, Ukrainian-born attorney and law professor (died 2000)
• January 9 – Chic Young, cartoonist (died 1973)
• March 24 – Ub Iwerks, animator, cartoonist, character designer, inventor and special effects technician (died 1971)
• May 8 – Turkey Stearnes, baseball player (died 1979)
• July 3 – Ruth Crawford Seeger, modernist composer and folk music arranger (died 1953)
• July 14 – George Tobias, actor (died 1980)
• July 22 – Pancho Barnes, pioneer aviator (died 1975)
• July 30 – John A. Carroll, U.S. Senator from Colorado from 1957 to 1963 (died 1983)
• August 3 – John C. Stennis, U.S. Senator from Mississippi from 1947 to 1989 (died 1995)
• August 4 – Louis Armstrong, jazz trumpeter (died 1971)
• August 8 – Ernest Lawrence, nuclear physicist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939 (died 1958)
• August 23 – John Sherman Cooper, U.S. Senator from Kentucky 1946-1949, 1952-1955 and 1956-1973 (died 1991)
• September 28 – Ed Sullivan, entertainment writer and television host (died 1974)
• December 5 – Walt Disney, animator, producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor and business magnate (died 1966)
• December 12 – Fred Barker, criminal member of the Barker-Karpis gang, son of Ma Barker (killed 1935)
• December 16 – Margaret Mead, cultural anthropologist and author (died 1978)

Deaths

• January 6 – James W. Bradbury, United States Senator from Maine from 1847 till 1853. (born 1802)
• January 16
  • Murray Hall, born Mary Anderson, bail bondsman and politician (born 1841 in Scotland)
  • Hiram Rhodes Revels, first African American senator (born 1827)
• January 21 – Elisha Gray, inventor and co-founder of Western Electric Manufacturing Company (born 1835)
• January 29 – Alexander H. Jones, Congressional Representative from North Carolina. (born 1822)
• March 13 – Benjamin Harrison, 23rd President of the United States from 1889 till 1893 and United States Senator from Indiana from 1881 to 1887. (born 1833)
• April 19 – Alfred Horatio Belo, newswriter and businessman, founder of The Dallas Morning News (born 1839)
• June 2 – James A. Herne, playwright and actor (born 1839)
• July 4 –
  • John Fiske, historian and philosopher (born 1842)
  • Julian Scott, artist and Civil War Medal of Honor recipient (born 1846)
• July 30 – Herbert Baxter Adams, educator and historian (born 1850)
• September 14 – William McKinley, 25th President of the United States from 1897 till 1901. (born 1843)
• October 10 – Lorenzo Snow, 5th President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (born 1814)
• October 21 – James A. Walker, Confederate general and US Congressman (born 1832)
• October 29 – Leon Czolgosz, Assassin of President William McKinley (born 1873)
• November 8 – Mary Ann Bickerdyke, nurse and hospital administrator for Union soldiers (born 1817)
• November 26 – John Denny, buffalo soldier and Medal of Honor recipient (born 1846)
• November 27 – Clement Studebaker, automobile manufacturer (born 1831)

Further reading

• "Domestic Chronology", Statistician and Economist, San Francisco: Louis P. McCarty, 1905, pp. 227–347 – via HathiTrust. (Covers events May 1898-June 1905)

See also

• List of American films of 1901
• Timeline of United States history (1900–1929)

External links

• Media related to 1901 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons