General, National, World History

“Immigrant Settlement” by State by Century

16^th Century: 

Florida was settled in 1565

17^th Century:

Virginia was settled in 1607, New Mexico 1610, New York in 1614, Massachusetts 1620, New Hampshire 1623, Maine 1624, Connecticut 1634, Maryland 1634, Rhode Island 1636, Delaware 1638, New Jersey 1660, North Carolina 1660, Michigan 1668, South Carolina 1670, Pennsylvania 1682, Texas 1682, Arkansas 1686, Louisiana 1699, Mississippi 1699

18^th Century:

Alabama was settled in 1702, Illinois in 1720, Vermont 1724, West Virginia 1727, Kansas 1727, Georgia 1733, Indiana 1733, Missouri 1735, Wisconsin 1766, Tennessee 1769, California 1769, Kentucky 1774, Arizona 1776, Alaska 1784, Ohio 1788, Iowa 1788

19^th Century:

Minnesota 1805, Montana 1809, Oregon 1811, Washington 1811, North Dakota 1812, Hawaii 1820, Nebraska 1823, Wyoming 1834, Idaho 1842, Utah 1847, Nevada 1849, Colorado 1858, South Dakota 1859, Oklahoma 1889

States entered the U.S.A. as follows.

34. Kansas Jan. 29, 1861 

35. West Virginia June 20, 1863 

36. Nevada Oct. 31, 1864 

37. Nebraska Mar. 1, 1867 

38. Colorado Aug. 1, 1876 

39. North Dakota Nov. 2, 1889 

40. South Dakota Nov. 2, 1889 

41. Montana Nov. 8, 1889 

42. Washington Nov. 11, 1889 

43. Idaho July 3, 1890 

44. Wyoming July 10, 1890 

45. Utah Jan. 4, 1896 

46. Oklahoma Nov. 16, 1907 

47. New Mexico Jan. 6, 1912 

48. Arizona Feb. 14, 1912 

49. Alaska Jan. 3, 1959 

50. Hawaii Aug. 21, 1959 

1861
Yale University confers the U.S.'s first Ph.D.

Jan. 9: South Carolina blocks a federal ship, the Star of the West, from resupplying Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor.

Feb. 4: Representatives from six seceding states adopt a Confederate constitution in Montgomery, Ala. Five days later, they elect Jefferson Davis, a former US Senator from Mississippi, the president of the Confederate States of America.

Apr. 12: At 4:30 a.m., Confederate guns fire on Fort Sumter, a federal installation in South Carolina's Charleston harbor. The fort surrendered after 34 hours of bombardment.

Apr. 19: President Lincoln orders a blockade of Confederate ports.

July 18: At the first battle of Bull Run, near Manassass, Va., Confederate forces rout a Union army.

Aug. 5: To help finance the Civil War, Congress enacts taxes on real estate and personal income.

Oct. 24: President Abraham Lincoln receives the first transcontinental telegraph message.

Nov. 7: Union forces capture Port Royal Island on the South Carolina coast.

1862
The Morrill Land Grant Act gives each state 30,000 acres per member of Congress to be used to create colleges of agriculture and mechanical arts. 69 land grant colleges were established on 13 million acres.

Mar. 9: The first battle between ironclad warships takes place off Hampton Roads, Va., where the Union's Monitor and the Confederate's Merrimac fight to a draw.

May 1: Capt. David G. Farragut captures New Orleans.

May 20: President Lincoln signs the Homestead Act, giving settlers title to 160 acres if they worked the land for five years. By 1890, 375,000 homesteaders received 48 million acres.

June 1: Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee is appointed commander of the Army of Northern Virginia.

July: General David Hunter organizes the first black regiment, the First Carolina.

July 22: President Lincoln tells his cabinet that he intends to issue an emancipation proclamation, but agrees to wait for a military victory so that this will not appear to be an act of desperation.

Aug. 18: A Sioux uprising begins in Minnesota after the government fails to pay cash annuities agreed to under treaty. About a thousand white settlers die before the Sioux are defeated in September.

Sept. 17: Union troops under Gen. George McClellan halt Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's invasion of the North at the battle of Antietam in western Maryland.

Sept. 22: President Lincoln issues his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that on Jan. 1, 1863 slaves in areas still in rebellion would be declared free.

Dec. 17: Gen. Ulysses S. Grant issues his notorious Gen. Order #11, which expels Jews from his department. The order was immediately rescinded by Pres. Lincoln.

1863
Congress authorizes a standard track width for railroads: 4' 8 1/2".

Jan. 1: President Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all slaves in areas in rebellion (excluding certain parts of Louisiana and Virginia). The Proclamation immediately freed slaves in parts of Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina.

Feb. 25: Congress passes the National Banking Act, establishing nationally-chartered banks.

Mar. 3: Congress requires all males between 20 and 45 register for military service. Draftees could be exempted from service by paying $300 or providing a substitute.

July 3-4: The Battle of Gettysburg. In an effort to spur European intervention, Gen. Robert E. Lee and his army invade the North. By accident, Lee's forces encounter George G. Meade's troops at Gettysburg, Pa., leading to the largest battle in the western hemisphere. Confederate forces suffered 30,000 casualties; Union troops, 25,000. On July 5, Lee's army retreated across the Potomac River, and was unable to take the offensive again.

July 5: A Confederate army at Vicksburg surrenders to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, giving the Union control of the Mississippi River. More than 29,000 Confederate troops surrender.

July 11-14: The New York City Draft Riots. Four days of rioting leave a thousand people dead or wounded before troops brought from Gettysburg restore order.

Aug. 21: Quantrill's Raiders, which includes Frank and Jesse James, attack Lawrence, Kansas., burning 185 buildings.

Oct.: President Lincoln proclaims the last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day.

Nov. 19: At a ceremony marking the dedication of a battlefield cemetery delivers the Gettysburg Address.

1864
Mar. 10: Ulysses S. Grant assumes command of the Union army.

Apr. 12: At Fort Pillow, Tenn., Confederate Gen. Nathan Forrest's cavalry massacres African American soldiers after they had surrendered.

July 30: The Battle of the Crater. At Petersburg, Va., Union troops dig a 586' tunnel underneath Confederate Lines and fill it with 8,000 lbs. of gunpowder.

Aug. 5: At the battle of Mobile Bay, Ala., Union Adm. David Farragut, declaring "Damn the torpedoes! Go ahead!defeats a Confederate fleet. The torpedoes were floating casks of gunpowder with contact fuses.

Nov. 8: Pres. Lincoln defeats Democratic candidate George B. McClellan.

Nov. 29: At dawn, some 700 Colorado volunteers led by Col. John Chivington attack a camp of 500 Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians who were flying an American flag and a white flag of truce. By nightfall, at least 150 Indians, mostly women and children, had been killed and their body parts taken as trophies.

1865
Mar. 3: Congress establishes the Freedman's Bureau.

Mar. 13: The Confederacy decides to permit slaves to serve in the military.

Apr. 9: Gen. Robert E. Lee surrenders to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomatox Courthouse, Va.

Apr. 14: On Good Friday, John Wilkes Booth shoots President Abraham Lincoln at Washington's Ford's Theater. As he leaps to the stage (breaking a shinbone), Booth shouts, "Sic Semper Tyrannis (Thus Always to Tyrants)." Lincoln died the next morning. Andrew Johnson becomes the 17th president.

Nov. 10: Confederate Capt. Henry Wirz, commandant of Andersonville, Ga., prison camp, is hanged for war crimes. He is accused of ordering prisoners shot on sight, of sending bloodhounds after escaped prisoners, and injecting prisoners with deadly vaccines.

Dec. 18: The 13th Amendment to the US Constitution abolishes slavery.

Dec. 24: The Ku Klux Klan is founded in Pulaski, Tenn. Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest is appointed the first Grand Wizard.

1866
The first big cattle drive takes place when cowboys drive 260,000 head from Texas to Kansans, Missouri, and Iowa.

The first Young Woman's Christian Association in the US opens in Boston.

Apr. 9: Congress passes the Civil Rights Act over President Andrew Johnson's veto, granting citizenship and civil rights to all persons born in the United States (except Indians) and providing for the punishment of those who violate those rights.

1867
The National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry, the first organization of American farmers, is founded.

Mar. 2: The first Reconstruction Act imposes martial law on the southern states, splits them into five military districts, and provides for the restoration of civil government when they ratify the 14th Amendment.

Mar. 2: Congress passes the Tenure of Office Act, which denies the president to remove officials who had been appointed with the Senate's consent.

Mar. 23: The second Reconstruction Act, passed over President Johnson's veto, provides for the registration of all qualified voters.

Mar. 30: "Seward's Icebox." Russia sells Alaska to the United States for $7.2 million, or less than 2 cents an acre.

July 19: The third Reconstruction Act requires the southern states to ratify the 15th Amendment before they are readmitted to the Union.

1868
Feb. 24: The House of Representatives votes to impeach President Andrew Johnson in part for violating the Tenure of Office Act, which forbid him to dismiss a cabinet member without congressional approval. The Senate trial lasted 11 and a half weeks. On the major charges, the Senate voted 35-19 for conviction, one vote short of the 2/3s vote required for removal from office.

June 25: Congress enacts an 8-hour workday for workers employed by the government.

July 28: The 14th Amendment to the US Constitution grants citizenship to anyone born in the United States and guarantees due process and equal protection of the laws. It serves as the basis for applying the rights specified in the US Constitution to the states.

Dec. 25: President Johnson grants amnesty to those who had participated in "insurrection or rebellion" against the United States.

1869
Jan.: When Commanche Chief Toch-a-way informs Gen. Philip H. Sheridan that he is a "good Indian," Sheridan reportedly replied: "The only good Indian is a dead Indian."

May 10: A golden spike is driven into a railroad tie at Promontory Point, Utah, completing the transcontinental railroad. Built in just over three years by 20,000 workers, it had 1,775 miles of track. The railroad's promoters received 23 million acres of land and $64 million in loans as an incentive.

1870
US population: 39,818,449.

31-year-old John D. Rockefeller forms Standard Oil of Ohio.

Feb. 25: Hiram R. Revels of Mississippi becomes the first African American to serve in the US Senate. Joseph H. Rainey of South Carolina becomes the first black Representative.

Mar. 30: The 15th Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees the right to vote regardless "of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

1871
P.T. Barnum opens his three-ring circus, hailing it as the "Greatest Show on Earth."

Jan.: Victoria Woodhull petitions Congress demanding that women receive the vote under the 14th Amendment.

Mar. 3: Congress declares that Indian tribes will no longer be treated as independent nations with whom the government must conduct negotiations.

Oct. 8: The Great Chicago Fire claims 250 lives and destroys 17,500 buildings.

1872
Montgomery Ward begins to sell goods to rural customers by mail.

Nov. 5: Susan B. Anthony and other women's suffrage advocates are arrested for attempting to vote in Rochester, N.Y.

1873
Mar. 3: The Comstock Act prohibits the mailing of obscene literature.

Sept. 18: The Financial Panic of 1873 begins. 5,183 business fail.

1874
The introduction of barbed wire provides the first economical way to fence in cattle on the Great Plains.

The discovery of gold leads thousands of prospectors to trespass on Indian lands the Black Hills in Dakota territory.

The Women's Christian Temperance Union is founded.

Mar. 11: 4-years-old Charley Brewster Ross is abducted, the country's first kidnapping for ransom. The child was never found.

Aug. 21: The Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, the nation's best-known preacher, is sued by newspaper editor Theodore Tilton for alienation of his wife's affections. The trial resulted in a hung jury.

1875
Mar. 1: Congress passes the Civil Rights Act of 1875 to guarantee equal use of public accommodations and places of public amusement. It also forbids the exclusion of African Americans from jury duty.

1876
Feb. 14: 29-year-old Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone.

May: The nation celebrates its centennial by opening an International Exhibition in Philadelphia.

June 25: George A. Custer and 265 officers and enlisted men are killed by Sioux Indians led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse at the Little Horn River in Montana.

1877
Charles Elmer Hires introduces root beer.

Feb. 27: An electoral commission declares Rutherford Hayes the winner of the disputed presidential election.

Apr. 10: President Hayes begins to withdraw federal troops from the South, marking the official end to Reconstruction.

June to Oct.: Federal troops pursue and capture Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce Indians of Oregon and force them to live on an Oklahoma reservation.

July 16: The Great Railroad Strikes begins in Marinsburg, W. Va., after the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad imposes a 10 percent wage cut.

Dec. 6: 30-year-old Thomas Edison invents the phonograph.

1878
German engineer Karl Benz produces the first automobile powered by an internal combustion engine.

Jan. 10: The Senate defeats a woman's suffrage amendment 34-16.

1879
Feb. 15: Congress grants woman attorneys the right to argue cases before the Supreme Court.

Oct. 21: Thomas Edison invents the light bulb.

1880
US population: 50,155,783

1881
Helen Hunt Jackson's Century of Dishonor recounts the government's unjust treatment of Native Americans.

July 2: President James Garfield is shot by Charles Guiteau, a disgruntled office-seeker. He died on Sept. 19.

July 4: Booker T. Washington opens Tuskegee Institute.

July 19: Sitting Bull and other Sioux Indians return to the United States from Canada.

1882
In Pace v. Alabama, the Supreme Court rules that an Alabama law imposing severe punishment on illegal interracial intercourse than for illegal intercourse between parties of the same race did not violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

Attorney Samuel Dodd devises the trust, under which stockholders turn over control of previously independent companies to a board of trustees.

May 6: Congress passes the Chinese Exclusion Act, barring Chinese Chinese immigration for ten years.

1883
Joseph Pulitzer purchases the New York World from Jay Gould. Circulation soars from 20,000 to 250,000 in four years.

Jan. 16: Congress passes the Pendleton Act, establishing a Civil Service Commission and filling government positions by a merit system, including competitive examinations.

Oct. 15: The Supreme Court rules that the Civil Rights Act of 1875 only forbids state-imposed discrimination, not that by individuals or corporations.

Nov. 18: Railroads in the United States and Canada adopt a system of standard time.

1884
May 1: Construction begins in Chicago on the first building with a steel skeleton, William Jenney's ten-story Home Insurance Company, marking the birth of the skyscraper.

Oct. 9: Rev. Samuel D. Burchard of New York calls the Democrats the party of "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion." With help of Irish-American voters, Democratic presidential nominee Grover Cleveland carried New York by 1,149 votes and won the election.

1886
Dr. Stanton Coit opens the first settlement house in New York to provide social services to the poor.

May 1: Over 300,000 workers demonstrate in behalf of an eight-hour work day.

May 4: The Haymarket Square bombing in Chicago kills seven police officers and wounds sixty.

May 10: The Supreme Court holds that corporations are persons covered by the 14th Amendment, and are entitled to due process.

Oct. 28: President Grover Cleveland unveils the Statue of Liberty.

Dec. 8: The American Federation of Labor was founded, with Samuel Gompers as president. Membership was restricted to skilled craftsmen.

1887
Feb. 4: The Interstate Commerce Act requires railroads to charge reasonable rates and forbids them from from offering rate reductions to preferred customers.

Feb. 8: The Dawes Severalty Act subdivides Indian reservations into individual plots of land of 160 to 320 acres. "Surplus" lands are sold to white settlers.

1888
Edward Bellamy publishes his utopian novel, Looking Backward, which predicts a cooperative commonwealth.

1889
New Jersey permits holding companies to buy up the stock of other corporations.

Apr. 22: President Benjamin Harrison opens a portion of Oklahoma to white settlement.

May 31: Johnstown flood. An abandoned reservoir breaks, flooding the city of Johnstown, Pa., and killing 2,295 people.

1890
US population: 62,947,714.

The US Bureau of the Census announces that the western frontier was now closed.

July 2: Congress passes the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

Nov. 1: Mississippi Plan. Mississippi restricts black suffrage by requiring voters to demonstrate an ability to read and interpret the US Constitution.

Dec. 15: Indian police kill Sitting Bull in South Dakota.

Dec. 29: Wounded Knee Massacre.

1891
James Naismith, a physical education instructor at the YMCA Training College in Springfield, Mass., invents basketball.
Mar. 14: A New Orleans mobs breaks into a prison and kills eleven Sicilian immigrants accused of murdering the city's police chief.

May 19: The Populist party is founded in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Sept. 22: 900,000 acres of land ceded to the Sauk, Fox, and Pottawatomi Indians is opened to white settlement.

1892
The boll weevil arrives in Texas.

Jan. 1: Ellis Island opens to screen immigrants. Twenty million immigrants passed through it before it was closed in 1954.

July 2: Homestead. Henry Clay Frick, who managed Andrew Carnegie's steelworks at Homestead, Pa., cuts wages, precipitating a strike that begins June 26. In a pitched battle with Pinkerton guards, brought in to protect the plant, ten strikers and three Pinkertons are killed. Pennsylvania's governor then sent in the state militia to protect strikebreakers. The strike ended Nov. 20.

July 4: The Populist party nominates James Baird Weaver, a former Union general from Iowa, for president. A banner across the stage states: "We Do Not Ask for Sympathy or Pity. We Ask for Justice."

Oct. 12: The World's Columbian Exhibition opens in Chicago to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Columbus's discovery of the New World. The first features the first Ferris Wheel.

1893
Frederick Jackson Turner delivers his address on "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," exploring the the frontier experience's role in shaping American character.

Jan. 17: Pro-American interests depose Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii.

1894
May 1: Coxey's Army. Jacob Coxey leads a march on Washington by the unemployed.

May 10: Pullman Strike. Workers at the Pullman sleeping car plant in Chicago go on strike after the company cut wages without reducing rents in company-owned housing. On June 26, the American Railway Union begins to boycott trains carrying Pullman cars.

July 3: Federal troops enforce a court injunction forbidding the American Railway Union from interfering with interstate commerce and delivery of the mail.

1895
May 20: The Supreme Court strikes down an income tax.

1896
May 18: Plessy v. Ferguson. The US Supreme Court rules that segregation of blacks and whites was permitted under the Constitution so long as both races receive equal facilities.

July 7: "You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold." William Jennings Bryan electrified the Democratic convention with his "Cross of Gold" speech and received the party's nomination, but was defeated Nov. 3 by Republican William McKinley.

1898
Feb. 9: The de Lome letter, written by the Spanish minister to the United States, characterizes Pres. McKinley as a weakling lacking integrity. It is printed in William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal.

Feb. 15: The battleship Maine blows up and sinks while anchored in Cuba's Havana harbor.

Apr. 25 to Aug. 12: Spanish-American War. As a result of the conflict, the United States acquires Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.

May 1: Commodore George Dewey's flotilla defeats the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay in the Philippines, suffering only eight wounded.

May 28: The Supreme Court rules that a child born of Chinese parents in the United States is an American citizen and cannot be deported under the Chinese Exclusion Act.

July 7: President McKinley signs a resolution annexing Hawaii.

1899
The Philippines achieved independence in 1946.

May 18-July 29: Delegates from the US and 25 other nations meet at The Hague to discuss disarmament, arbitration of international disputes, protection of noncombatants, and limitations on methods of warfare.

Oct. 14: The Literary Digest writes: "The ordinary horseless carriage is at present a luxury for the wealthy; and although its price will fall in the future, it will never, of course, come into as common use as the bicycle."