1881 in the United States

Incumbents

Federal Government">Federal government of the United States">Federal Government

• President:
• * until March 4: Rutherford B. Hayes
• * March 4–September 19: James A. Garfield
• * starting September 19: Chester A. Arthur
• Vice President:
• * until March 4: William A. Wheeler
• * March 4–September 19: Chester A. Arthur
• * starting September 19: vacant
• Chief Justice: Morrison Waite
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Samuel J. Randall , J. Warren Keifer
• Congress: 46th, 47th

  Governors

Lieutenant Governors

Events

January–March

• January 25 - Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell form the Oriental Telephone Company.
• February 2 - The 5.6 Parkfield earthquake affects central California with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VII. Some damage occurred near Imusdale northwest of Parkfield, including cracks in the roads, fallen chimneys, and partially collapsed buildings.
• February 5 - Phoenix, Arizona, is incorporated.
• February 19 - Kansas becomes the first U.S. state to prohibit all alcoholic beverages.
• February 22 - Cleopatra's Needle is erected in Central Park, New York City.
• March - Barnum & Bailey's "Greatest Show on Earth" opens in Madison Square Garden.
• March 4 - James A. Garfield is sworn in as the 20th President of the United States.
• March 15 - First plots of Abilene, Texas, are auctioned; the town is incorporated later in the year.

  April–June

• April 11 - Spelman College is established.
• April 14 - The Four Dead in Five Seconds Gunfight erupts in El Paso, Texas.
• April 16 - Bat Masterson fights his last gun battle in Dodge City, Kansas.
• April 21 - The University of Connecticut is founded as the Storrs Agricultural School.
• April 28 - Billy the Kid escapes from his two jailers at the Lincoln County Jail in Mesilla, New Mexico, killing James Bell and Robert Ollinger before stealing a horse and riding out of town.
• May 21
• *The American Red Cross is established by Clara Barton.
• *The United States Tennis Association is established by a small group of tennis club members; the first U.S. Tennis Championships are played this year.
• June 12 - The USS Jeannette is crushed in an Arctic Ocean ice pack.

  July–September

• July 2 - Assassination of James A. Garfield: James A. Garfield, President of the United States, is shot by lawyer Charles J. Guiteau at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C. He survives the shooting but suffers from infection of his wound, dying on September 19.
• July 4 - The Tuskegee Institute opens in Alabama.
• July 14 - Billy the Kid is shot and killed by Pat Garrett outside Fort Sumner.
• July 20 - Indian Wars: Sioux chief Sitting Bull leads the last of his fugitive people in surrender to United States troops at Fort Buford in Montana.
• Summer - First ever summer camp held, on Chocorua Island in Grafton County, New Hampshire.
• August 27 - The fifth hurricane of the 1881 Atlantic hurricane season hits Florida and the Carolinas, killing about 700.
• September 5 - The Thumb Fire in the U.S. state of Michigan destroys over a million acres and kills 282 people.
• September 12 - Francis Howell High School in St. Charles, Missouri, and Stephen F. Austin High School in Austin, Texas open on the same day, putting them in a tie for the title of the oldest public high school west of the Mississippi River.
• September 19 - President James A. Garfield dies weeks after being shot. Vice President Chester A. Arthur becomes the 21st President of the United States.

  October–December

• October 5-December 31 - International Cotton Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia
• October 18-21- Yorktown Centennial is observed in Virginia, Yorktown Victory Monument cornerstone laid.
• October 22 - Boston Symphony Orchestra gives its inaugural concert.
• October 26 - The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral occurs in Tombstone, Cochise County, Arizona.
• October 29 - Judge magazine is first published.
• November 17 - The trial of Charles J. Guiteau begins in Washington, D.C.
• December 4 - The first edition of the Los Angeles Times is published.
• December 28 - Virgil Earp is ambushed in Tombstone and loses the use of his left arm.

  Undated

• New York City's oldest independent school for girls, the Convent of the Sacred Heart New York, is founded.
• Minto, North Dakota is founded.

  Ongoing

• Gilded Age

  Sport

• September 16 – The Chicago White Stockings win their Second straight pennant with a 4–0 win over the Boston Red Caps.

  Births

• January 8 - Henrik Shipstead, U.S. Senator from Minnesota from 1923 to 1947
• January 15 - John Rodgers, U.S. Navy officer, naval aviation pioneer
• January 21 - Arch McCarthy, baseball player
• January 31 - Irving Langmuir, chemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1932
• February 17 - Bess Streeter Aldrich, fiction writer
• February 28 - Otto Dowling, U.S. Navy officer and 25th Governor of American Samoa
• March 4
• * Maude Fealy, stage and film actress
• * Thomas Sigismund Stribling, novelist
• * Richard C. Tolman, mathematical physicist
• March 12 - Arthur Raymond Robinson, U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1925 to 1935
• March 13 - Louis Chauvin, ragtime pianist
• March 29 - Raymond Hood, Art Deco architect
• April 16 - Alice Corbin Henderson, poet
• May 14 - G. Murray Hulbert, politician
• June 9 - Marion Leonard, silent film actress
• July 2 - Royal H. Weller, politician
• July 4 - Ulysses S. Grant III, soldier and planner
• July 8 - Mantis James Van Sweringen, financier
• July 11 - Louise Marion Bosworth, social scientist
• July 22 - Kenneth Whiting, U.S. Navy officer, submarine and naval aviation pioneer
• July 30 - Smedley Butler, U.S. Marine Corps general
• August 3 - Nathan Post, 7th and 10th Governor of American Samoa
• August 10 - Witter Bynner, poet and scholar
• August 12 - Cecil B. DeMille, film director
• August 20 - Edgar Albert Guest, poet
• September 8 - Harry Hillman, track athlete
• September 26 - Hiram Wesley Evans, Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard
• October 1 - William Boeing, engineer and airplane manufacturer
• October 10 - David Baird, Jr., U.S. Senator from New Jersey from 1929 to 1930
• October 22 - Clinton Davisson, physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1937
• October 30 - Elizabeth Madox Roberts, novelist and poet
• November 5 - George A. Malcolm, lawyer, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines and educator
• November 9 - Margaret Reed Lewis, cell biologist
• November 15 - Franklin Pierce Adams, columnist, critic, writer and wit, member of the Algonquin Round Table
• November 20 - Arthur Marshall, ragtime composer and performer
• December 3 - Henry Fillmore, American composer and bandleader
• December 5 - Martin W. Clement, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad from 1935 to 1948
• December 12 - Doris Keane, stage actress
• December 16 - Daniel F. Steck, U.S. Senator from Iowa from 1926 to 1931

  Deaths

• January 3 - Anna McNeill Whistler, James Whistler's mother and subject of his painting
• February 14 - Fernando Wood, New York City mayor
• February 23 - Robert F. R. Lewis, naval officer
• April 24 - James Thomas Fields, publisher
• May 21 - Thomas A. Scott, industrialist
• June 18 - Henry Smith Lane, U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1836 to 1837 and from 1854 to 1858
• July 14 - Billy The Kid, Old West gunfighter
• July 17 - Jim Bridger, explorer and trapper
• August 10 - Orville Hickman Browning, U.S. Senator from Illinois from 1866 to 1869
• September 7 - Sidney Lanier, musician and dialect poet
• September 13 - Ambrose Burnside, Union Army general, railroad executive, inventor, industrialist and Rhode Island Senator
• September 15 - Susan May Williams, railroad heiress, wife of Jérôme Napoléon Bonaparte
• September 19 - James A. Garfield, 20th President of the U.S. from March to September 1881
• September 22 - Solomon L. Spink, U.S. Congressman from Illinois
• October 3 - Orson Pratt, religious leader
• October 8 - Joseph Carter Abbott, U.S. Senator from North Carolina from 1868 to 1871
• October 12 - Josiah Gilbert Holland, novelist and poet
• October 26 - shot in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
• * Billy Clanton, outlaw and brother of Ike Clanton
• * Frank McLaury, Old West gunman and brother of Tom McLaury
• * Tom McLaury, pioneer and Old West gunman
• October 31 - George W. DeLong, naval officer and Arctic explorer
• November 23 - Abijah Gilbert, U.S. Senator from Florida from 1869 to 1875
• December 4 - Wood Hite, outlaw and cousin of Jesse and Frank James
• December 13 - John Quidor, painter