# 1907 in the United States

Events from the year 1907 in the United States.

## Incumbents
### Federal government

* President: Theodore Roosevelt (R-New York)
* Vice President: Charles W. Fairbanks (R-Indiana)
* Chief Justice: Melville Fuller (Illinois)
* Speaker of the House of Representatives: Joseph Gurney Cannon (R-Illinois)
* Congress: 59th (until March 4), 60th (starting March 4)
* Governors and lieutenant governors
* Governors
* Governor of Alabama: William D. Jelks (Democratic) (until January 14), B. B. Comer (Democratic) (starting January 14)
* Governor of Arkansas:
* until January 8: Jeff Davis (Democratic)
* January 8 – February 15: John Sebastian Little (Democratic)
* February 15 – May 14: John Isaac Moore (Democratic)
* starting May 14: Xenophon Overton Pindall (Democratic)
* Governor of California: George Pardee (Republican) (until January 9), James Gillett (Republican) (starting January 9)
* Governor of Colorado: Jesse Fuller McDonald (Republican) (until January 8), Henry Augustus Buchtel (Republican) (starting January 8)
* Governor of Connecticut: Henry Roberts (Republican) (until January 9), Rollin S. Woodruff (Republican) (starting January 9)
* Governor of Delaware: Preston Lea (Republican)
* Governor of Florida: Napoleon B. Broward (Democratic)
* Governor of Georgia: Joseph M. Terrell (Democratic) (until June 29), Hoke Smith (Democratic) (starting June 29)
* Governor of Idaho: Frank R. Gooding (Republican)
* Governor of Illinois: Charles S. Deneen (Republican)
* Governor of Indiana: J. Frank Hanly (Republican)
* Governor of Iowa: Albert B. Cummins (Republican)
* Governor of Kansas: Edward W. Hoch (Republican)
* Governor of Kentucky: J. C. W. Beckham (Democratic) (until December 10), Augustus E. Willson (Republican) (starting December 10)
* Governor of Louisiana: Newton Crain Blanchard (Democratic)
* Governor of Maine: William T. Cobb (Republican)
* Governor of Maryland: Edwin Warfield (Democratic)
* Governor of Massachusetts: Curtis Guild, Jr. (Republican)
* Governor of Michigan: Fred M. Warner (Republican)
* Governor of Minnesota: John A. Johnson (Democratic)
* Governor of Mississippi: James K. Vardaman (Democratic)
* Governor of Missouri: Joseph W. Folk (Democratic)
* Governor of Montana: Joseph Toole (Democratic)
* Governor of Nebraska: John H. Mickey (Republican) (until January 3), George L. Sheldon (Republican) (starting January 3)
* Governor of Nevada: John Sparks (Silver)
* Governor of New Hampshire: John McLane (Republican) (until January 3), Charles M. Floyd (Republican) (starting January 3)
* Governor of New Jersey: Edward C. Stokes (Republican)
* Governor of New York: Charles Evans Hughes (Republican) (starting January 1)
* Governor of North Carolina: Robert Broadnax Glenn (Democratic)
* Governor of North Dakota: Elmore Y. Sarles (Republican) (until January 9), John Burke (Democratic) (starting January 9)
* Governor of Ohio: Andrew L. Harris (Republican)
* Governor of Oklahoma: Frank Frantz (Republican) (until November 16), Charles N. Haskell (Democratic) (starting November 16)
* Governor of Oregon: George Chamberlain (Democratic)
* Governor of Pennsylvania: Samuel W. Pennypacker (Republican) (until January 15), Edwin Sydney Stuart (Republican) (starting January 15)
* Governor of Rhode Island: George H. Utter (Republican) (until January 1), James H. Higgins (Democratic) (starting January 1)
* Governor of South Carolina: Duncan Clinch Heyward (Democratic) (until January 15), Martin Frederick Ansel (Democratic) (starting January 15)
* Governor of South Dakota: Samuel H. Elrod (Republican) (until January 8), Coe I. Crawford (Republican) (starting January 8)
* Governor of Tennessee: John I. Cox (Democratic) (until January 17), Malcolm R. Patterson (Democratic) (starting January 17)
* Governor of Texas: S. W. T. Lanham (Democratic) (until January 15), Thomas Mitchell Campbell (Democratic) (starting January 15)
* Governor of Utah: John Christopher Cutler (Republican)
* Governor of Vermont: Fletcher D. Proctor (Republican)
* Governor of Virginia: Claude A. Swanson (Democratic)
* Governor of Washington: Albert E. Mead (Republican)
* Governor of West Virginia: William M. O. Dawson (Republican)
* Governor of Wisconsin: James O. Davidson (Republican)
* Governor of Wyoming: Bryant B. Brooks (Republican)
* Lieutenant governors
* Lieutenant Governor of Alabama: Russell M. Cunningham (Democratic) (until January 14), Henry B. Gray (Democratic) (starting January 14)
* Lieutenant Governor of California: Alden Anderson (Republican) (until January 8), Warren R. Porter (Republican) (starting January 8)
* Lieutenant Governor of Colorado: Fred W. Parks (Republican) (until January 8), Erastus Harper (Republican) (starting January 8)
* Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut: Rollin S. Woodruff (Republican) (until January 9), Everett J. Lake (Republican) (starting January 9)
* Lieutenant Governor of Delaware: Isaac T. Parker (Republican)
* Lieutenant Governor of Idaho: Burpee L. Steeves (Republican) (until January 7), Ezra A. Burrell (Republican) (starting January 7)
* Lieutenant Governor of Illinois: Lawrence Sherman (Republican)
* Lieutenant Governor of Indiana: Hugh T. Miller (Republican)
* Lieutenant Governor of Iowa: John Herriott (Republican) (until January 13), Warren Garst (Republican) (starting January 13)
* Lieutenant Governor of Kansas: David J. Hanna (Republican) (until month and day unknown), William J. Fitzgerald (Republican) (starting month and day unknown)
* Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky: William P. Thorne (Democratic) (until December 10), William Hopkinson Cox (Republican) (starting December 10)
* Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana: Jared Y. Sanders, Sr. (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts: Eben Sumner Draper (Republican)
* Lieutenant Governor of Michigan: Alexander Maitland (Republican) (until month and day unknown), Patrick H. Kelley (Republican) (starting month and day unknown)
* Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota: Ray W. Jones (Republican) (until January 7), Adolph Olson Eberhart (Republican) (starting January 7)
* Lieutenant Governor of Mississippi: John Prentiss Carter (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of Missouri: John C. McKinley (Republican)
* Lieutenant Governor of Montana: Edwin L. Norris (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of Nebraska: Edmund G. McGilton (Republican) (until January 3), Melville R. Hopewell (Republican) (starting January 3)
* Lieutenant Governor of Nevada: Lemuel Allen (political party unknown) (until May 22), Denver S. Dickerson (Silver) (starting May 22)
* Lieutenant Governor of New York: Lewis Stuyvesant Chanler (Democratic) (starting January 1)
* Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina: Francis D. Winston (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of North Dakota: David Bartlett (Republican) (until January 9), Robert S. Lewis (Republican) (starting January 9)
* Lieutenant Governor of Ohio: vacant
* Lieutenant Governor of Oklahoma: George W. Bellamy (Democratic) (starting month and day unknown)
* Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania: William M. Brown (Republican) (until January 15), Robert S. Murphy (Republican) (starting January 15)
* Lieutenant Governor of Rhode Island: Frederick Jackson (Republican)
* Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina: John Sloan (Democratic) (until January 15), Thomas Gordon McLeod (Democratic) (starting January 15)
* Lieutenant Governor of South Dakota: John E. McDougall (Republican) (until January 8), Howard C. Shober (Republican) (starting January 8)
* Lieutenant Governor of Tennessee: Ernest Rice (Democratic) (until month and day unknown), E. G. Tollett (Democratic) (starting month and day unknown)
* Lieutenant Governor of Texas: George D. Neal (Democratic) (until January 15), Asbury Bascom Davidson (Democratic) (starting January 15)
* Lieutenant Governor of Vermont: George H. Prouty (Republican)
* Lieutenant Governor of Virginia: James Taylor Ellyson (Democratic)
* Lieutenant Governor of Washington: Charles E. Coon (Republican)
* Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin: vacant (until January 7), William D. Connor (Republican) (starting January 7)

## Events
### January–March

* January 1 – Daniel J. Tobin becomes president of the Teamsters, beginning a 45-year presidency.
* January 14 – B. B. Comer is sworn in as the 33rd governor of Alabama replacing William D. Jelks.
* January 23 – Charles Curtis from Kansas becomes the first Native American U.S. Senator.
* February 6 – Nantahala National Forest is established.
* February 12 – The steamship Larchmont collides with the Harry Knowlton off Block Island Rhode Island; 183 lives are lost.
* February 26 – President Theodore Roosevelt appoints Col. George Washington Goethals as chief engineer of the Panama Canal.
* March 1 – Colville National Forest is established.
* March 2 – Umpqua and Custer National Forest are established.
* March 9 – Reclamation Service within the Department of the Interior.

### April–June

* April – This month's issue of Good Housekeeping magazine displays the cover price One Dollar a Year (under the title).
* April 7 – Hersheypark opens in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
* April 15 – Triangle Fraternity, for engineering and related majors, is founded at Pennsylvania State University.
* April 17 – Today is the all-time busiest day of immigration through Ellis Island; this will be the busiest year ever seen here, with 1.1 million immigrants arriving.
* April 18 – The USS Kansas (BB-21), a Connecticut-class battleship, is commissioned.
* May 25 – Inyo National Forest is established.

### July–September

* July 1 – The United States Treasury stops collecting interest on the 1879 $10 Refunding Certificates, which have their value set at $21.30.
* July 21 – The SS Columbia sinks after colliding with the lumber schooner San Pedro off Shelter Cove, California, resulting in 88 deaths.
* July 23 – Chugach National Forest is established.
* August 1 – Aeronautical Division established within the U.S. Army Signal Corps.
* August 15 – Ordination in Constantinople of Fr. Raphael Morgan, first African-American Eastern Orthodox priest, "Priest-Apostolic" to America and the West Indies.
* August 17 – Pike Place Market in Seattle, Washington officially opens for business.
* August 28 – American Messenger Service, predecessor to UPS, is founded by James E. (Jim) Casey in Seattle, Washington.
* September 7 – The new passenger liner RMS Lusitania makes its maiden voyage from Liverpool, England to New York City.
* September 10 – The first Neiman Marcus luxury department store opens in Dallas, Texas.
* September 29 – A foundation stone is laid for the Washington National Cathedral; construction will not be fully completed until 1990.

### October–December

* October 1 – Office of the Superintendent of Prisons and Prisoners established within Department of Justice.
* October 22 – Panic of 1907: A bank run forces New York's Knickerbocker Trust Company to suspend operations.
* October 24 – A major American financial crisis is averted when J. P. Morgan, E. H. Harriman, James Stillman, Henry Clay Frick, and other Wall Street financiers create a $25,000,000 pool to invest in the shares on the plunging New York Stock Exchange, ending the bank panic of 1907, a move which ultimately leads to establishment of the Federal Reserve System.
* November 3 – President Roosevelt approves the takeover of the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company by J. P. Morgan's U.S. Steel company in the wake of the panic of 1907.
* November 7 – Delta Sigma Pi (a co-ed professional business fraternity) is founded at the School of Commerce, Accounts and Finance of New York University in New York City.
* November 16
** Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory are combined to become Oklahoma, which is admitted into the Union as the 46th U.S. state (see History of Oklahoma).
** Passenger liner RMS Mauretania, the world's largest and fastest at this date, sets out on her maiden voyage from Liverpool (England) to New York.
* November 28 – Johnny Hayes wins the inaugural Yonkers Marathon.
* December 6 – Monongah Mining Disaster: A coal mine explosion kills 362 workers in Monongah, West Virginia.
* December 16 – The Great White Fleet departs Hampton Roads, Virginia on a 14-month circumnavigation of the globe.
* December 18 – Ouachita National Forest is established.
* December 19 – An explosion in a coal mine in Jacobs Creek, Pennsylvania kills 239.
* December 31 – The first electric ball drops in Times Square.

### Undated

* Indiana becomes the world's first legislature to place laws permitting compulsory sterilization for eugenic purposes on the statute book.
* The Lockport Powerhouse is built in Illinois.
* The National Rural Education Association is founded in Indiana.
* The Osage Nation retains mineral rights in reservation lands.

### Ongoing

* Progressive Era (1890s–1920s)
* Lochner era (c. 1897–c. 1937)
* Black Patch Tobacco Wars (1904–1909)
* Great White Fleet voyage (1907–1909)

## Sport

* November 23 – Yale Bulldogs win their first IAAUS (later NCAA) College Football National Championship

## Births

* January 2 – Gordon L. Allott, U.S. Senator from Colorado from 1955 to 1973 (died 1989)
* January 9
** Eldred G. Smith, patriarch (d. 2013)
** Earl W. Renfroe, African American orthodontist, educator, and activist (d. 2000)
* January 19 – Paul Fannin, U.S. Senator from Arizona from 1959 to 1965 (died 2002)
* February 3 – James A. Michener, novelist (died 1997)
* February 15 – Cesar Romero, actor (died 1994)
* February 22
** Sheldon Leonard, screen actor, writer, director and producer (died 1997)
** Robert Young, actor (died 1998)
* February 25 – Kathryn Wasserman Davis, philanthropist (died 2013)
* February 26 – Dub Taylor, screen character actor (died 1994)
* February 27 – Mildred Bailey, Native American jazz singer (died 1951)
* February 28 – Milton Caniff, cartoonist (died 1988)
* March 4 – Maria Branyas, American-Spanish supercentenarian, oldest known living person from 17 January 2023 to 19 August 2024 (died 2024)
* March 12 – Dorrit Hoffleit, astronomer (died 2007)
* April 21 – Wade Mainer, singer and banjoist (died 2011)
* May 4 – Lincoln Kirstein, cultural figure (died 1996)
* May 11 – Kent Taylor, screen actor (died 1987)
* May 12 – Katharine Hepburn, screen actress (died 2003)
* May 15 – Thomas J. Dodd, U.S. Senator from Connecticut from 1959 to 1971 (died 1971)
* May 15 – Josef Alexander, composer (died 1992)
* May 26 – John Wayne, film actor and director (died 1979)
* May 27 – Rachel Carson, environmental writer (died 1964)
* June 6 – Nate Barragar, American football player and actor (died 1985)
* July 4
** John Anderson, discus thrower (died 1948)
** Gordon Griffith, actor, director and producer (died 1958)
** Howard Taubman, author and critic (died 1996)
* July 7 – Robert A. Heinlein, science fiction author (died 1988)
* August 19 – Thruston Ballard Morton, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1957 to 1968 (died 1982)
* August 21 – John G. Trump, electrical engineer, inventor and physicist (died 1985)
* August 29 – Lurene Tuttle, radio actress (died 1986)
* August 30 – John Mauchly, computer scientist (died 1980)
* August 31 – William Shawn, editor of The New Yorker (died 1992)
* September 1 – Walter Reuther, union leader, founded United Auto Workers (died 1970)
* September 17 – Warren E. Burger, 15th Chief Justice of the United States (died 1995)
* September 19 – Lewis F. Powell Jr., Associate Justice of the Supreme Court (died 1998)
* October 22 – Jimmie Foxx, baseball player, coach, and manager (died 1967)
* November 16 – Burgess Meredith, actor (died 1997)
* December 23 – James Roosevelt, businessman and politician (died 1991)
* December 25
** Cab Calloway, African American jazz singer and bandleader (died 1994)
** Glenn McCarthy, oil tycoon (died 1988)
** Rufus P. Turner, African American electronic engineer (died 1982)
* December 26 – Albert Gore Sr., politician and father of Al Gore (died 1998)

## Deaths

* January 2 – Henry R. Pease, U.S. Senator from Mississippi from 1874 to 1875 (born 1835)
* January 24 – Russell A. Alger, U.S. Senator from Michigan from 1902 to 1907 (born 1836)
* February 17 – Henry Steel Olcott, military officer and co-founder of the Theosophical Society (born 1832)
* March 9 – James L. Pugh, U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1880 to 1897 (born 1820)
* April 14 – Frank Manly Thorn, lawyer, politician, government official, essayist, journalist, humorist, inventor and 6th Superintendent of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey (born 1836)
* April 23 – Alferd Packer, cannibal (born 1842)
* May 1 – Melissa Elizabeth Riddle Banta, poet (born 1834)
* May 4 – John Watts de Peyster, author, philanthropist and soldier (born 1821)
* May 8 – Edmund G. Ross, U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1866 to 1871 (born 1826)
* May 9 – Melissa Elizabeth Banta, poet, travel writer (born 1834)
* May 24 – John Patton, Jr., U.S. Senator from Michigan from 1894 to 1895 (born 1850)
* May 26 – Ida Saxton McKinley, First Lady of the United States (born 1847)
* June 10 – Stephen Bates, sheriff of Vergennes, Vermont (born 1842)
* June 11 – John Tyler Morgan, U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1877 to 1907 (born 1824)
* June 12 – Ellen Russell Emerson, ethnologist (born 1837)
* June 14 – William Le Baron Jenney, architect and civil engineer (born 1832)
* June 21 – Lucien Baker, U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1895 to 1901 (born 1846)
* July 11 – Robert Watt, miner (born 1832)
* July 25 – Peter Anderson, Union Army Medal of Honor recipient (born 1847)
* July 27 – Edmund Pettus, U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1897 to 1907 (born 1821)
* August 1 – Lucy Mabel Hall-Brown, physician and writer (born 1843)
* August 3 – Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Beaux-Arts sculptor (born 1848 in Ireland)
* August 14 – William Birney, Union Army general, abolitionist, attorney and writer (born 1819)
* October 3 – Jacob Nash Victor, railroad builder (born 1835)
* October 8 – Mary Cyrene Burch Breckinridge, Second Lady of the United States (born 1826)
* October 30 – Caroline Dana Howe, author (born 1824)
* November 22 – Asaph Hall, astronomer (born 1829)
* December 7 – Carrie Clark, model, notably of Muriel's Babies cigar box fame
* December 23 – Stephen Mallory II, U.S. Senator from Florida from 1897 to 1907 (born 1848)
* Sarah Gibson Humphreys, author and suffragist (born 1830)