1891 in the United States

Federal government

• President: Benjamin Harrison (R-Indiana)
• Vice President: Levi P. Morton (R-New York)
• Chief Justice: Melville Fuller (Illinois)
• Speaker of the House of Representatives:

Thomas Brackett Reed (R-Maine) (until March 4)

Charles Frederick Crisp (D-Georgia) (starting December 8)

• Congress: 51st (until March 4), 52nd (starting March 4)

• January 2 – A. L. Drummond of New York is appointed Chief of the Treasury Secret Service.
• January 5 – Henry B. Brown, of Michigan, is sworn in as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.
• January 13 – In California, Leland Stanford (Rep.) re-elected Senator.
• January 17 – George Bancroft dies at Washington DC at age 91, all government buildings flying flags lower to half mast until after the funeral.
• January 20 – Jim Hogg becomes the first native Texan to be governor of that state.
• January 27 – Mammoth Mine disaster
• January 29 – Liliuokalani is proclaimed Queen of Hawaii.
• March 3
  • The International Copyright Act of 1891 is passed by the Fifty-first United States Congress.
  • Yellowstone Timberland Reserve, predecessor of Shoshone National Forest, in Wyoming is established as the first United States National Forest.
• March 14 – In New Orleans, a lynch mob storms the Old Parish Prison and lynches 11 Italians who had been found not guilty of the murder of Police Chief David Hennessy.
• March 30 – Shoshone National Forest is established in Wyoming, the first U.S. National Forest.
• April 1 – The Wrigley Company is founded in Chicago.
• May 5 – The Music Hall in New York (later known as Carnegie Hall) has its grand opening and first public performance, with Tchaikovsky as guest conductor.
• May 20 – Thomas Edison's prototype kinetoscope is first displayed at Edison's Laboratory, for a convention of the National Federation of Women's Clubs.
• June 1 – The Johnstown Inclined Plane opens in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
• June 21 – First long-distance transmission of alternating current by the Ames power plant near Telluride, Colorado by Lucien and Paul Nunn.
• September 23 – California Institute of Technology in California is founded.
• October 1 – Stanford University in California opens its doors.
• October 16 – White River National Forest is established in Colorado.
• November 28 – The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers is organized in St. Louis, Missouri.
• December 17 – Drexel University is inaugurated as the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry in Philadelphia.

Undated

• Seattle University is established as the Immaculate Conception school.
• Marie Owens becomes (probably) the first female police officer in the U.S., with the Chicago Police Department.
• Jesse W. Reno invents the first working escalator, installed as an attraction at the Old Iron Pier, Coney Island , New York City.

Ongoing

• Gilded Age (1869–c. 1896)
• Gay Nineties (1890–1899)
• Progressive Era (1890s–1920s)
• Garza Revolution in Texas and Mexico (1891–1893)

January–June

• January 1 – Charles Bickford, actor (died 1967)
• January 2 – Charles P. Thompson, actor (died 1979)
• January 7 – Zora Neale Hurston, Harlem Renaissance writer (died 1960)
• January 25 – Wellman Braud, jazz bassist (died 1966)
• January 28 – Bill Doak, baseball player (died 1954)
• January 30 – Walter Beech, aviator and aircraft manufacturer (died 1950)
• February 10 – Elliot Paul, writer (died 1958)
• February 12 – Eugene Millikin, U.S. Senator from Colorado from 1941 to 1957 (died 1958)
• February 13 – Grant Wood, painter (died 1942)
• February 15 – Henry J. Knauf, politician (died 1950)
• March 10 – Sam Jaffe, actor (died 1984)
• March 19 – Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the United States (died 1974)
• March 26 – Will Wright, actor (died 1962)
• April 13 – Nella Larsen, novelist (died 1964)
• April 15 – Wallace Reid, actor (died 1923)
• April 19 – W. Alton Jones, industrialist and philanthropist (died 1962)
• April 26 – Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, mistress of Franklin D. Roosevelt (died 1948)
• May 21 – John Peale Bishop, writer (died 1944)
• May 22 – Eddie Edwards, jazz trombonist (died 1963)
• May 24 – William F. Albright, archeologist and Biblical scholar (died 1971)
• May 26 –
  • Maxwell Bodenheim, poet and novelist (murdered 1954)
  • Mamie Smith, African American blues singer (died 1946)
• May 30 – Ben Bernie, bandleader (died 1943)
• June 3 – Jim Tully, vagabond, pugilist and writer (died 1947)
• June 8 – Audrey Munson, model and silent film actress (died 1996)
• June 9 – Cole Porter, composer and songwriter (died 1964)
• June 28
  • Esther Forbes, historical fiction writer (died 1967)
  • Carl Panzram, serial killer and rapist (executed 1930)
• June 30 – Man Mountain Dean, wrestler (died 1953)

July–December

• July 5 – John Howard Northrop, biochemist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1946 (suicide 1987)
• July 10 – Edith Quimby, medical researcher and physicist (died 1982)
• July 16 – Blossom Seeley, singer and vaudeville performer (died 1974)
• July 18 – Billy Sullivan, actor (died 1946)
• July 26 – William J. Connors, politician (died 1961)
• August 1 – Edward Streeter, humorist (died 1976)
• August 15 – Chief Yowlachie, Native American actor (died 1966)
• August 29 – Joyce Hall, founder of Hallmark Cards (died 1982)
• September 3 – Annie Elizabeth Delany, African American physician and author (died 1995)
• September 28 – Myrtle Gonzalez, silent film actress (died 1918)
• October 7 – Charles R. Chickering, illustrator (died 1970)
• October 25 – Charles Coughlin, antisemitic radio host and Catholic priest (died 1979)
• October 29 – Fanny Brice, actress, comedian and singer (died 1951)
• November 2 – David Townsend, art director (died 1935)
• November 7 – Miriam Cooper, silent film actress (died 1976)
• November 10 – Carl Stalling, cartoon film composer (died 1972)
• November 15 – Vincent Astor, philanthropist (died 1959)
• November 20 – Leon Cadore, baseball pitcher (died 1958)
• December 14
  • Katherine MacDonald, silent film actress (died 1956)
  • Lester Melrose, record producer of the Chicago blues genre (died 1968)
• December 26 – Henry Miller, novelist (died 1980)

• January 5 – Emma Abbott, operatic soprano (born 1850)
• January 17 – George Bancroft, historian (born 1800)
• January 29 – William Windom, U.S. Senator from Minnesota from 1870 to 1881 and from 1881 to 1883 (born 1827)
• February 14 – William Tecumseh Sherman, Civil War general (born 1820)
• February 21 – James Timberlake, law enforcement officer (born 1846)
• February 28 – George Hearst, U.S. Senator from California from 1887 to 1891 (born 1820)
• March 6
  • George M. Chilcott, U.S. Senator from Colorado from 1882 to 1883 (born 1828)
  • Joshua Hill, U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1871 to 1873 (born 1812)
• March 21 – Joseph E. Johnston, Confederate Army general (born 1807)
• April 2 – Albert Pike, Confederate military officer, attorney, writer and Freemason (born 1809)
• April 7 – P. T. Barnum, showman, businessman, and politician (b. 1810)
• April 14 – Annie Nowlin Savery, suffragist (born 1831 in the United Kingdom)
• June 9 – Henry Edwards, entomologist and actor (born 1827 in the United Kingdom)
• June 17 – Harrison Ludington, 13th Governor of Wisconsin from 1876 to 1878 (born 1812)
• June 21 – Joseph E. McDonald, U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1875 to 1881 (born 1819)
• July 4 – Hannibal Hamlin, 15th vice president of the United States from 1861 to 1865 (born 1809)
• August 5 – Thomas S. Bocock, U.S. Congressman, Speaker of the Confederate States House of Representatives (born 1815)
• August 12 – James Russell Lowell, Romantic poet, critic, satirist, writer, diplomat and abolitionist (born 1819)
• August 14
  • John Henry Hopkins Jr., clergyman and hymnist (born 1820)
  • Sarah Childress Polk, First Lady of the U.S. (born 1803)
• August 27 – Samuel C. Pomeroy, U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1861 to 1873 (born 1816)
• September 10 – Charles B. Clark, politician and entrepreneur (born 1844)
• September 28 – Herman Melville, novelist, short story writer and poet (born 1819)
• October 16 – Sarah Winnemucca, Northern Paiute author, activist and educator (born 1844)
• November 6 – J. Gregory Smith, Vermont governor (born 1818)
• November 17 – George H. Cooper, admiral (born 1821)
• December 7 – Mary Crane, activist; mother of writer Stephen Crane (born 1827)
• December 12 – Julia A. Ames, reformer (born 1861)
• December 20 – Preston B. Plumb, U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1877 to 1891 (born 1837)
• December 29 – Marion McKinley Bovard, academic administrator, 1st president of the University of Southern California (born 1847)

• List of American films of the 1890s
• Timeline of United States history (1860–1899)

• Media related to 1891 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons