Federal government edit

• President: Ulysses S. Grant (R-Illinois)
• Vice President: Henry Wilson (R-Massachusetts)
• Chief Justice: Morrison Waite (Ohio) (starting March 4)
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: James G. Blaine (R-Maine)
• Congress: 43rd

• January 1 – New York City annexes The Bronx.
• February 21 – The Oakland Daily Tribune publishes its first newspaper.
• March 18 – Hawaii signs a treaty with the United States granting exclusive trading rights.
• March – The Young Men's Hebrew Association in Manhattan (which still operates today as the 92nd Street Y) is founded.
• May 20 – Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive a U.S. patent for blue jeans with copper rivets. The price is $13.50 per dozen.
• July 1
  • Philadelphia Zoo opens, the first public zoo in the U.S.
  • Four-year-old Charley Ross, America's first major kidnapping for ransom victim, is taken from his home in Philadelphia.
  • The Sholes and Glidden typewriter, with cylindrical platen and QWERTY keyboard, is first marketed.
• November 4 – Democrats regain the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time since 1860.
• November 7 – Harper's Weekly publishes a political cartoon by Thomas Nast considered the first important use of an elephant as a symbol for the Republican Party.^[1]
• November 9 – The Sigma Kappa sorority is founded at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, by Mary Caffrey Low, Elizabeth Gorham Hoag, Ida Fuller, Frances Mann, and Louise Helen Coburn.
• November 11 – The Gamma Phi Beta sorority is founded at Syracuse University. This is the first women's Greek letter organization to be called a sorority.
• November 24 – Inventor Joseph Glidden patents barbed wire.
• November 25 – The United States Greenback Party is established as a "National Independent" political party, composed primarily of farmers financially hurt by the Panic of 1873.
• November 28 – King Kalākaua's 1874–75 state visit to the United States begins when the ship carrying him from Hawaii, USS Benicia, docks in San Francisco.

Undated edit

• The San Diego Natural History Museum is founded.^[2]
• Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, is completed.

Ongoing edit

• Reconstruction era (1865–1877)
• Gilded Age (1869–c. 1896)
• Depression of 1873–79 (1873–1879)

• January 4 – John Thomas, U.S. Senator from Idaho from 1928 to 1933 and from 1940 to 1945 (died 1945)
• January 7 – M. M. Logan, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1931 to 1939 (died 1939)
• January 9 – Helen Tufts Bailie, social reformer and activist (died 1962)
• January 29 – John D. Rockefeller Jr., financier and philanthropist, son of John D. Rockefeller (died 1960)
• February 2 – William T. Innes, writer, ichthyologist, publisher (died 1969)
• March 4 – Stephen Victor Graham, United States Navy Rear Admiral and 18th Governor of American Samoa (died 1955)
• March 8 – Charles Weeghman, restaurateur and owner of Chicago Cubs (died 1938)
• April 5 – Jesse H. Jones, entrepreneur, 9th United States Secretary of Commerce (died 1956)
• April 16 – Frederick Van Nuys, U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1933 to 1944 (died 1944)
• March 5 – Daniel O. Hastings, U.S. Senator from Delaware from 1928 to 1937 (died 1966)
• March 26 – Robert Frost, poet (died 1963)
• March 29 – Lou Henry Hoover, First Lady of the United States as wife of Herbert Hoover (died 1944)
• May 20 – Augustine Lonergan, U.S. Senator from Connecticut from 1933 to 1939 (died 1947)
• July 1 – Edward P. Costigan, U.S. Senator from Colorado from 1931 to 1937 (died 1939)
• July 3 – Margaret G. Hays, comics writer and artist (died 1925)
• August 5 – Mayme Schweble, gold miner and politician (died 1943)
• August 10
  • Herbert Hoover, 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933 (died 1964)
  • Tod Sloan, jockey (died 1933)
• September 13 – Henry F. Ashurst, U.S. Senator from Arizona from 1912 to 1941 (died 1962)
• December 4 – Edwin S. Broussard, U.S. Senator from Louisiana from 1921 to 1933 (died 1934)

• January 7 – John Burton Thompson, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1853 to 1859 (born 1810)
• January 17 – Chang and Eng Bunker, Thai-American conjoined twin brothers (born 1811)
• February 24 – John Bachman, Lutheran minister, social activist and naturalist (born 1790)
• March 8 – Millard Fillmore, 13th president of the U.S. from 1850 to 1853, and 12th vice president of the U.S. from 1849 to 1850 (born 1800)
• March 11 – Charles Sumner, U.S. Senator from Massachusetts from 1851 to 1874 (born 1811)
• June 8 – Cochise, one of the greatest leaders of the Apache Indians, dies on the Chiricahua reservation in southeastern Arizona
• October 6 – Samuel M. Kier, industrialist (born 1813)
• November 20 – Jackson Morton, U.S. Senator from Florida from 1849 to 1855 (born 1794)
• Full date unknown
  • Paul Jennings, slave of James Madison, writer (born 1799)
  • Eliza Seymour Lee, pastry chef and restaurateur (born 1800)

• Timeline of United States history (1860–1899)

•   Media related to 1874 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons