# 1850 in the United States

Events from the year 1850 in the United States.

## Incumbents
### Federal government

* President:
       Zachary Taylor (W-Kentucky) (until July 9)
       Millard Fillmore (W-New York) (starting July 9)
* Vice President:
       Millard Fillmore (W-New York) (until July 9)
       vacant (starting July 9)
* Chief Justice: Roger B. Taney (Maryland)
* Speaker of the House of Representatives: Howell Cobb (D-Georgia)
* Congress: 31st
* Governors and lieutenant governors
* Governors
* Governor of Alabama: Henry W. Collier (Democratic)
* Governor of Arkansas: John Selden Roane (Democratic)
* Governor of California: Peter Hardeman Burnett (Democratic) (starting September 9)
* Governor of Connecticut: Joseph Trumbull (Whig) (until May 4), Thomas H. Seymour (Democratic) (starting May 4)
* Governor of Delaware: William Tharp (Democratic)
* Governor of Florida: Thomas Brown (Whig)
* Governor of Georgia: George W. Towns (Democratic)
* Governor of Illinois: Augustus C. French (Democratic)
* Governor of Indiana: Joseph A. Wright (Democratic)
* Governor of Iowa: Ansel Briggs (Democratic) (until December 4), Stephen P. Hempstead (Democratic) (starting December 4)
* Governor of Kentucky: John J. Crittenden (Whig) (until July 13), John L. Helm (Democratic) (starting July 13)
* Governor of Louisiana: Isaac Johnson (Democratic) (until January 28), Joseph Marshall Walker (Democratic) (starting January 28)
* Governor of Maine: John W. Dana (Democratic) (until May 8), John Hubbard (Democratic) (starting May 8)
* Governor of Maryland: Philip F. Thomas (Democratic)
* Governor of Massachusetts: George N. Briggs (Democratic)
* Governor of Michigan: Epaphroditus Ransom (Democratic) (until January 7), John S. Barry (Democratic) (starting January 7)
* Governor of Mississippi: Joseph W. Matthews (Democratic) (until January 10), John A. Quitman (Democratic) (starting January 10)
* Governor of Missouri: Austin Augustus King (Democratic)
* Governor of New Hampshire: Samuel Dinsmoor, Jr. (Democratic)
* Governor of New Jersey: Daniel Haines (Democratic)
* Governor of New York: Hamilton Fish (Whig) (until end of December 31)
* Governor of North Carolina: Charles Manly (Whig)
* Governor of Ohio: Seabury Ford (Whig) (until December 12), Reuben Wood (Democratic) (starting December 12)
* Governor of Pennsylvania: William F. Johnston (Whig)
* Governor of Rhode Island: Henry B. Anthony (Whig)
* Governor of South Carolina: Whitemarsh B. Seabrook (Democratic) (until December 13), John Hugh Means (Democratic) (starting December 13)
* Governor of Tennessee: William Trousdale (Democratic)
* Governor of Texas: Peter Hansborough Bell (Democratic)
* Governor of Vermont: Carlos Coolidge (Whig) (until October 11), Charles K. Williams (Whig) (starting October 11)
* Governor of Virginia: John B. Floyd (Democratic)
* Governor of Wisconsin: Nelson Dewey (Democratic)
* Lieutenant governors
* Lieutenant Governor of California: John McDougall (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut: Thomas Backus (Democratic) (until May 4), Charles H. Pond (Democratic) (starting May 4)
* Lieutenant Governor of Illinois: William McMurtry (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of Indiana: James H. Lane (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky: John LaRue Helm (Whig) (until July 31), vacant (starting July 31)
* Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana: Trasimond Landry (Whig) (until January 28), Jean Baptiste Plauche (Whig) (starting January 28)
* Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts: John Reed, Jr. (political party unknown)
* Lieutenant Governor of Michigan: William M. Fenton (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of Missouri: Thomas Lawson Price (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of New York: George W. Patterson (Whig) (until end of December 31)
* Lieutenant Governor of Rhode Island: Thomas Whipple (political party unknown)
* Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina: William Henry Gist (Democratic) (until December 13), Joshua John Ward (Democratic) (starting December 13)
* Lieutenant Governor of Texas: John Alexander Greer (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of Vermont: Robert Pierpoint (Whig) (until October 11), Julius Converse (Whig) (starting October 11)
* Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin: John E. Holmes (Democratic) (until January 7), Samuel W. Beall (Democratic) (starting January 7)

## Events
### January–March

* January – Sacramento floods.
* January 29 – Henry Clay introduces the Compromise of 1850 to Congress.
* January 31 – The University of Rochester is chartered in Rochester, New York; it admits its first students in November
* c. January–February – The Liberty Head double eagle first issued for commerce.
* February 8–17 – Battle at Fort Utah: The Nauvoo Legion kills Timpanogos hostile to the Mormon settlement at Fort Utah on the orders of Brigham Young.
* February 28 – The University of Utah opens in Salt Lake City.
* March 7 – United States Senator Daniel Webster gives his "Seventh of March" speech, in which he endorses the Compromise of 1850, in order to prevent a possible civil war.
* March 16 – Nathaniel Hawthorne's historical novel The Scarlet Letter is published in Boston, Massachusetts.
* March 19 – American Express is founded by Henry Wells and William Fargo.

### April–June

* April 4 – Los Angeles is incorporated as a city in California.
* April 15 – San Francisco is incorporated as a city in California.
* April 19 – Clayton–Bulwer Treaty is signed by the United States and Great Britain, allowing both countries to share Nicaragua and not claim complete control over the proposed Nicaragua Canal.
* May 7 – The brigantine USS Advance is loaned to the United States Navy.
* May 23 – The USS Advance puts to sea from New York City to search for Franklin's lost expedition in the Arctic.
* June – Harper's Magazine published as a new monthly in New York City.
* June 1 – The 1850 United States census shows that 11.2% of the population classed as "Negro" are of mixed race.
* June 3 – Traditional date of Kansas City, Missouri's founding: it is incorporated by Jackson County, Missouri as the "Town of Kansas".

### July–September

* July 1 – St. Mary's Institute (the future University of Dayton) admits its first pupils in Dayton, Ohio.
* July 9 – President Zachary Taylor dies in office; Vice President Millard Fillmore becomes the 13th president of the United States.
* July 10 – President Fillmore is sworn in.
* July 14 – John Gorrie makes the first public demonstration of his ice-making machine, in Apalachicola, Florida.
* September 9
** California is admitted to the Union as the 31st state (see History of California and An Act for the Admission of the State of California).
** Utah Territory is established.
** New Mexico Territory is organized by order of the U.S. Congress.
* September 18 – The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 is passed by the U.S. Congress. Harriet Tubman becomes an official conductor of the Underground Railroad.

### October–December

* October 19 – Phi Kappa Sigma International Fraternity founded at the University of Pennsylvania.
* October 28 – Delegate Edward Ralph May delivers a speech on behalf of African American suffrage to the Indiana Constitutional Convention.
* December 16 – Steamer South America burns on the Mississippi River in Louisiana; 27 killed including 13 U.S. Army recruits from Newport Barracks in Kentucky

### Undated

* The American system of watch manufacturing starts in Roxbury, Massachusetts, with the Waltham Watch Company.
* Mayer Lehman arrives from Germany to join his siblings in Lehman Brothers merchant business in Montgomery, Alabama.
* Allan Pinkerton forms the North-Western Police Agency, later the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, in Chicago.
* Astronomer Maria Mitchell becomes the first woman member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
* The temperance organization, International Organisation of Good Templars, is established in Utica, New York, as the order of the Knights of Jericho.
* One of the original segments of the historic Pacific Highway in Washington (state) in Clark and Cowlitz counties is established.

### Ongoing

* California gold rush (1848–1855)

## Births

* January 1 – John Barclay Armstrong, Texas Ranger lieutenant and a U.S. Marshal (died 1913)
* January 10 – John Wellborn Root, Chicago architect (died 1891)
* January 18 – Seth Low, educator (died 1916)
* January 24 – Mary Noailles Murfree, novelist (died 1922)
* January 27 – Samuel Gompers, labor union leader (died 1924)
* January 28 – Edward Merritt Hughes, U.S. Navy officer (died 1903)
* February 1 – Emma Churchman Hewitt, author and journalist (died 1921)
* February 2 – Cassius Aurelius Boone, Mayor of Orlando and businessman (died 1917)
* February 6 – Elizabeth Williams Champney, author (died 1922)
* February 8
** Kate Chopin, writer (died 1904)
** Charles Rockwell Lanman, Sanskrit scholar (died 1941)
* February 15 – Albert B. Cummins, U.S. Senator from Iowa from 1908 to 1926 (died 1926)
* February 27
** Henry E. Huntington, railroad pioneer and art collector (died 1927)
** Laura E. Richards, author (died 1943)
* March 9 – Daniel B. Towner, hymn composer (died 1919)
* March 26 – Edward Bellamy, Utopian novelist and socialist (died 1898)
* March 31 – Charles Doolittle Walcott, invertebrate paleontologist (died 1927)
* April 3 – Zina P. Young Card, Mormon leader and women's rights activist (died 1931)
* April 8 – John Peters, baseball player (died 1924)
* April 10 – Mary Emilie Holmes, geologist and educator (died 1906)
* April 11
** Rosetta Luce Gilchrist, physician and author (died 1921)
** Isidor Rayner, U.S. senator from Maryland from 1905 to 1912 (died 1912)
* April 18 – Joseph Labadie, labor organizer (died 1933)
* April 20 – Daniel Chester French, sculptor (died 1931)
* April 30
** Ruth Alice Armstrong, temperance activist (died 1901)
** Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller, novelist (died 1937)
* May 8 – Ross Barnes, baseball player and manager (died 1915)
* May 12 – Henry Cabot Lodge, statesman (died 1924)
* May 14 – Alva Adams, 3-time Governor of Colorado (died 1922)
* June 3 – Albert M. Todd, businessman and politician (died 1931)
* June 5 – Pat Garrett, bartender and sheriff (died 1908)
* June 15 – Charles Hazelius Sternberg, paleontologist (died 1943)
* June 18
** Cyrus H. K. Curtis, magazine publisher (died 1933)
** Alice Moore McComas, author, editor, lecturer and reformer (died 1919)
* June 21 – Daniel Carter Beard, Scouting pioneer (died 1941)
* July 2 – Robert Ridgway, ornithologist (died 1929)
* July 7 – William E. Mason, U.S. Senator from Illinois from 1897 to 1903 (died 1921)
* July 8 – Charles Rockwell Lanman, Sanskrit scholar (died 1941)
* July 11 – Annie Armstrong, Baptist leader (died 1938)
* July 12 – Newell Sanders, businessman and politician (died 1938)
* July 18 – Rose Hartwick Thorpe, poet (died 1939)
* July 20 – John G. Shedd, businessman (died 1926)
* July 25 – Lydia J. Newcomb Comings, educator (died 1946)
* July 28 – William Whittingham Lyman, vintner (died 1921)
* July 31 – Robert Love Taylor, Tennessee congressman (died 1912)
* August 28 – Charles H. Aldrich, Solicitor General of the U.S. (died 1929)
* September 2 – Eugene Field, poet and essayist (died 1895)
* September 6 – Marion Howard Brazier, journalist (died 1935)
* October 1
** David R. Francis, politician (died 1927)
** Thomas Vincent Welch, politician (died 1903)
* October 14 – Newton E. Mason, rear admiral (died 1945)
* October 30 – John Patton, Jr., U.S. Senator from Michigan from 1894 to 1895 (died 1907)
* November 5 – Ella Wheeler Wilcox, poet (died 1919)
* November 18 – John S. Armstrong, real estate developer (died 1908)
* December 9 – Emma Abbott, operatic soprano (died 1891)
* December 21 – William Wallace Lincoln, third son of Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln (died 1862)
* December 23 – Louise Reed Stowell, scientist and author (died 1932)
* December 25 – Florence Griswold, art curator (died 1937)

## Deaths

* February 1 – Edward Baker Lincoln, second son of Abraham Lincoln (born 1846)
* March 3 – Oliver Cowdery, religious leader (born 1806)
* March 21 – Miguel Pedrorena, early settler of San Diego, California (born c. 1808)
* March 28 – Gerard Brandon, fourth and sixth governor of Mississippi from 1825 to 1826 and from 1826 to 1832 (born 1788)
* March 31 – John C. Calhoun, seventh vice president of the United States from 1825 to 1832 (born 1782)
* April 12 – Adoniram Judson, Congregationalist and later Baptist missionary (born 1788)
* April 24 – John Norvell, U.S. Senator from Michigan from 1837 to 1841 (born 1789)
* May 16 – William Hendricks, U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1825 to 1837 (born 1782)
* July 9 – Zachary Taylor, 12th president of the United States from 1849 to 1850 (born 1784)
* July 19 – Margaret Fuller, journalist, literary critic and women's rights advocate, presumed drowned (born 1810)
* November 19 – Richard Mentor Johnson, ninth vice president of the United States from 1837 to 1841, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1819 to 1829 (born 1780)