1901 in the United States

Events from the year 1901 in the United States.

Federal government

 * President:
 * William McKinley (R-Ohio) (until September 14)
 * Theodore Roosevelt (R-New York) (starting September 14)


 * Vice President:
 * vacant (until March 4)
 * Theodore Roosevelt (R-New York) (March 4 – September 14)
 * vacant (starting September 14)


 * Chief Justice: Melville Fuller (Illinois)
 * Speaker of the House of Representatives: David B. Henderson (R-Iowa)
 * Congress: 56th (until March 4), 57th (starting March 4)

{| class="wikitable collapsible collapsed" ! Governors and lieutenant governors

Governors
• Governor of Alabama: William J. Samford (Democratic) (until June 11), William D. Jelks (Democratic) (starting June 11)

• Governor of Arkansas: Daniel Webster Jones (Democratic) (until January 8), Jeff Davis (Democratic) (starting January 8)

• Governor of California: Henry Gage (Republican)

• Governor of Colorado: Charles Spalding Thomas (Democratic) (until January 8), James Bradley Orman (Democratic) (starting January 8)

• Governor of Connecticut: George E. Lounsbury (Republican) (until January 9), George P. McLean (Republican) (starting January 9)

• Governor of Delaware: Ebe W. Tunnell (Democratic) (until January 15), John Hunn (Republican) (starting January 15)

• Governor of Florida: William D. Bloxham (Democratic) (until January 8), William Sherman Jennings (Democratic) (starting January 8)

• Governor of Georgia: Allen D. Candler (Democratic)

• Governor of Idaho: Frank Steunenberg (Democratic) (until January 7), Frank W. Hunt (Democratic) (starting January 7)

• Governor of Illinois: John Riley Tanner (Republican) (until January 14), Richard Yates Jr. (Republican) (starting January 14)

• Governor of Indiana: James A. Mount (Republican) (until January 14), Winfield T. Durbin (Republican) (starting January 14)

• Governor of Iowa: Leslie M. Shaw (Republican)

• Governor of Kansas: William E. Stanley (Republican)

• Governor of Kentucky: J. C. W. Beckham (Democratic)

• Governor of Louisiana: William Wright Heard (Democratic)

• Governor of Maine: Llewellyn Powers (Republican) (until January 2), John Fremont Hill (Republican) (starting January 2)

• Governor of Maryland: John Walter Smith (Democratic)

• Governor of Massachusetts: Winthrop Murray Crane (Republican)

• Governor of Michigan: Hazen S. Pingree (Republican) (until January 1), Aaron T. Bliss (Republican) (starting January 1)

• Governor of Minnesota: John Lind (Democratic) (until January 7), Samuel Rinnah Van Sant (Republican) (starting January 7)

• Governor of Mississippi: Andrew H. Longino (Democratic)

• Governor of Missouri: Lon Vest Stephens (Democratic) (until January 14), Alexander Monroe Dockery (Democratic) (starting January 14)

• Governor of Montana: Robert Burns Smith (Democratic) (until January 7), Joseph Toole (Democratic) (starting January 7)

• Governor of Nebraska:

• * until January 3: William A. Poynter (Democratic)

• * January 3-May 1: Charles Henry Dietrich (Republican)

• * starting May 1: Ezra P. Savage (Republican)

• Governor of Nevada: Reinhold Sadler (Silver)

• Governor of New Hampshire: Frank W. Rollins (Republican) (until January 3), Chester B. Jordan (Republican) (starting January 3)

• Governor of New Jersey: Foster MacGowan Voorhees (Republican)

• Governor of New York: Benjamin Barker Odell Jr. (Republican) (starting January 1)

• Governor of North Carolina: Daniel Lindsay Russell (Republican) (until January 15), Charles Brantley Aycock (Democratic) (starting January 15)

• Governor of North Dakota: Frederick B. Fancher (Republican) (until January 10), Frank White (Republican) (starting January 10)

• Governor of Ohio: George K. Nash (Republican)

• Governor of Oregon: T. T. Geer (Republican)

• Governor of Pennsylvania: William A. Stone (Republican)

• Governor of Rhode Island: William Gregory (Republican) (until December 16), Charles D. Kimball (Republican) (starting December 16)

• Governor of South Carolina: Miles Benjamin McSweeney (Democratic)

• Governor of South Dakota: Andrew E. Lee (Populist) (until January 8), Charles N. Herreid (Republican) (starting January 8)

• Governor of Tennessee: Benton McMillin (Democratic)

• Governor of Texas: Joseph D. Sayers (Democratic)

• Governor of Utah: Heber Manning Wells (Republican)

• Governor of Vermont: William W. Stickney (Republican)

• Governor of Virginia: James Hoge Tyler (Democratic)

• Governor of Washington: John Rankin Rogers (Populist)/(Democratic) (until December 26), Henry McBride (Republican) (starting December 26)

• Governor of West Virginia: George W. Atkinson (Republican) (until March 4), Albert B. White (Republican) (starting March 4)

• Governor of Wisconsin: Edward Scofield (Republican) (until January 7), Robert M. La Follette Sr. (Republican) (starting January 7)

• Governor of Wyoming: DeForest Richards (Republican)

Lieutenant governors
• Lieutenant Governor of California: Jacob H. Neff (Republican)

• Lieutenant Governor of Colorado: Francis Patrick Carney (Populist) (until January 8), David Courtney Coates (Democratic) (starting January 8)

• Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut: Lyman A. Mills (Republican) (until January 9), Edwin O. Keeler (Republican) (starting January 9)

• Lieutenant Governor of Delaware: Philip L. Cannon (Republican) (starting January 15)

• Lieutenant Governor of Idaho: J. H. Hutchinson (Democratic) (until January 7), Thomas F. Terrell (Democratic) (starting January 7)

• Lieutenant Governor of Illinois: William Northcott (Republican)

• Lieutenant Governor of Indiana: William S. Haggard (Republican) (until January 14), Newton W. Gilbert (Republican) (starting January 14)

• Lieutenant Governor of Iowa: James C. Milliman (Republican)

• Lieutenant Governor of Kansas: Harry E. Richter (Republican)

• Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky: vacant

• Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana: Albert Estopinal (Democratic)

• Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts: John L. Bates (Republican)

• Lieutenant Governor of Michigan: Orrin W. Robinson (Republican)

• Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota: Lyndon A. Smith (Republican)

• Lieutenant Governor of Mississippi: James T. Harrison (Democratic)

• Lieutenant Governor of Missouri: August Bolte (Democratic) (until January 14), John Adams Lee (Democratic) (starting January 14)

• Lieutenant Governor of Montana: Archibald E. Spriggs (political party unknown) (until month and day unknown), Frank G. Higgins (political party unknown) (starting month and day unknown)

• Lieutenant Governor of Nebraska:

• * until January 3: Edward A. Gilbert (Republican)

• * January 3-May 1: Ezra P. Savage (Republican)

• * starting May 1: vacant

• Lieutenant Governor of Nevada: James R. Judge (political party unknown)

• Lieutenant Governor of New York: Timothy L. Woodruff (Republican)

• Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina: Charles A. Reynolds (Republican) (until January 15), Wilfred D. Turner (Democratic) (starting January 15)

• Lieutenant Governor of North Dakota: vacant (until January 10), David Bartlett (Republican) (starting January 10)

• Lieutenant Governor of Ohio: John A. Caldwell (Republican)

• Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania: John P. S. Gobin (Republican)

• Lieutenant Governor of Rhode Island: Charles D. Kimball (Republican) (until December 16), vacant (starting December 16)

• Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina: Robert B. Scarborough (Democratic) (until January 15), James H. Tillman (Democratic) (starting January 15)

• Lieutenant Governor of South Dakota: John T. Kean (Republican) (until January 8), George W. Snow (Republican) (starting January 8)

• Lieutenant Governor of Tennessee: Seid Waddell (Democratic) (until month and day unknown), Newton H. White (Democratic) (starting month and day unknown)

• Lieutenant Governor of Texas: James Browning (Democratic)

• Lieutenant Governor of Vermont: Martin F. Allen (Republican)

• Lieutenant Governor of Virginia: Edward Echols (Democratic)

• Lieutenant Governor of Washington:

• * until January 14: Thurston Daniels (Populist)

• * January 14-December 26: Henry McBride (Republican)

• * starting December 26: vacant

• Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin: Jesse Stone (Republican)
 * }

January–March

 * January 1 – Pentecostalism is born, at a prayer meeting at Bethel Bible College in Topeka, Kansas.
 * January 3 – Census Commissioner predicts a US population of at least 300 million by 2001
 * January 5 – Typhoid fever breaks out in a Seattle jail, the first of two typhoid outbreaks in the United States during the year.
 * January 7 – Alferd Packer is released from prison in the United States after serving 18 years for cannibalism.
 * January 10 – In the first great Texas gusher, oil is discovered at Spindletop in Beaumont, Texas.
 * January 22 – The Grand Opera House in Cincinnati, Ohio, is destroyed in a fire.
 * January 28 – Baseball's American League declares itself a Major League.
 * February 4 – Puccini's Tosca makes its U.S. debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
 * February 5
 * The Hay–Pauncefote Treaty is signed by the United Kingdom and United States, ceding control of the Panama Canal to the United States.
 * J. P. Morgan buys mines and steel mills in the United States, marking the first billion-dollar business deal.
 * In Evansville, Indiana, a fire burns through the business district, causing $175,000 of damage.
 * February 20 – The Hawaii Territory Legislature convenes for the first time.
 * February 25 – U.S. Steel, the first billion-dollar corporation and at some time the world's largest producer of steel, is incorporated by industrialist J. P. Morgan.
 * March 2
 * The U.S. Congress passes the Platt Amendment, limiting the autonomy of Cuba as a condition for the withdrawal of American troops.
 * The Carnegie Steel Company with the Illinois Steel Company and The National Steel Company merge to form the United States Steel Corporation.
 * March 4 – President William McKinley begins his second term; Theodore Roosevelt is sworn in as Vice President.
 * March 9 – The Olds Motor Co. factory in Lansing, Michigan, burns to the ground; it is reconstructed with the world's first automobile assembly line for production of the Oldsmobile Curved Dash.

April–June

 * April 25 – New York State becomes the first to require automobile license plates.
 * May – Monte Ne health resort opens in the Ozarks.
 * May 3 – The Great Fire of 1901 in Jacksonville, Florida, begins.
 * May 17 – The U.S. stock market crashes for the first time.
 * May 27 – The Edison Storage Battery Company is founded in New Jersey.
 * May 28 – Cherry v. Des Moines Leader is decided in the Iowa Supreme Court, upholding the right to publish critical reviews.
 * June 12 – Cuba becomes a U.S. protectorate.

July–September

 * June 22–July 31 – The worst heat wave in U.S. history until the 1930s, affecting most areas east of the 100th meridian, is estimated to have killed over 9,500 people.
 * July 1 – The Bureau of Chemistry is established within the United States Department of Agriculture.
 * July 24 – Author O. Henry is released from prison in Columbus, Ohio after serving 3 years for embezzlement from the First National Bank in Austin, Texas.
 * August 10 – U.S. Steel recognition strike of 1901: Members of the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers begin a strike against United States Steel Corporation after failing to reach a settlement of their demands, and 14,000 employees walk off of the job.
 * September 2 – Vice President Theodore Roosevelt utters the famous phrase, "Speak softly and carry a big stick" at the Minnesota State Fair.
 * September 5 – The National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (later renamed Minor League Baseball) is formed in Chicago.
 * September 6 – American anarchist Leon Czolgosz shoots President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. McKinley dies 8 days later.
 * September 7 – The Boxer Protocol is signed between the Qing Empire of China and the Eight-Nation Alliance.
 * September 14 – Vice President Theodore Roosevelt becomes the 26th president of the United States, upon the death of President William McKinley.
 * September 26 – The body of President Abraham Lincoln is exhumed and reinterred in concrete several feet thick.

October–December

 * October 4 – The American yacht Columbia defeats the Irish Shamrock in the America's Cup yachting race.
 * October 16 – President Theodore Roosevelt invites African American leader Booker T. Washington to the White House. The American South reacts angrily to the visit, and racial violence increases in the region.
 * October 23 – Yale University celebrates its bicentennial.
 * October 24 – Michigan schoolteacher Annie Taylor goes down Niagara Falls in a barrel and survives.
 * October 29 – In Amherst, New Hampshire, nurse Jane Toppan is arrested for murdering the Davis family of Boston with an overdose of morphine.
 * October 29 – Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of William McKinley, is executed by electrocution.
 * November 1 – Sigma Phi Epsilon is founded in Richmond, Virginia.
 * November 15 – The Alpha Sigma Alpha fraternity is founded at Longwood University.
 * November 28 – The new state constitution of Alabama requires voters to have passed literacy tests.
 * December 3 – President Theodore Roosevelt delivers a 20,000-word speech to the House of Representatives asking Congress to curb the power of trusts "within reasonable limits."

Undated

 * The Intercollegiate Prohibition Association is established in Chicago.
 * Force (cereal) first produced.

Ongoing

 * Progressive Era (1890s–1920s)
 * Lochner era (c. 1897–c. 1937)
 * Philippine–American War (1899–1902)

Births

 * January 2 – Bob Marshall, wilderness activist, founder of The Wilderness Society (died 1939)
 * January 3 – Henrietta Bingham, journalist, newspaper executive, horse-breeder and anglophile (died 1968)
 * January 4 – Raoul Berger, Ukrainian-born attorney and law professor (died 2000)
 * January 9 – Chic Young, cartoonist (died 1973)
 * February 1
 * Howard I. Chapelle, naval architect, museum curator and author (died 1975)
 * Clark Gable, actor (died 1960)
 * February 8 – Virginius Dabney, teacher, journalist, writer and editor (died 1995)
 * February 9 – Brian Donlevy, actor (died 1972)
 * February 10 – Stella Adler, actress and teacher (died 1992)
 * March 24 – Ub Iwerks, animator, cartoonist, character designer, inventor and special effects technician (died 1971)
 * May 8 – Turkey Stearnes, baseball player (died 1979)
 * July 3 – Ruth Crawford Seeger, modernist composer and folk music arranger (died 1953)
 * July 9 – Jester Hairston, actor and composer (died 2000)
 * July 10 – Daniel V. Gallery, admiral and author (died 1977)
 * July 14 – Lucien Prival, actor (died 1994)
 * July 20 – Heinie Manush, baseball player (died [1971)
 * July 21 – Albert Hamilton Gordon, businessman and philanthropist (died 2009)
 * July 14 – George Tobias, actor (died 1980)
 * July 22 – Pancho Barnes, pioneer aviator (died 1975)
 * July 30 – John A. Carroll, U.S. Senator from Colorado from 1957 to 1963 (died 1983)
 * August 3 – John C. Stennis, U.S. Senator from Mississippi from 1947 to 1989 (died 1995)
 * August 4 – Louis Armstrong, jazz trumpeter (died 1971)
 * August 8 – Ernest Lawrence, nuclear physicist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939 (died 1958)
 * August 23 – John Sherman Cooper, U.S. Senator from Kentucky 1946-1949, 1952-1955 and 1956-1973 (died 1991)
 * September 24 – Gerald Warner Brace, writer, educator, sailor and boat builder (died 1978)
 * September 28 – Ed Sullivan, entertainment writer and television host (died 1974)
 * December 5 – Walt Disney, animator, producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor and business magnate (died 1966)
 * December 12 – Fred Barker, criminal member of the Barker-Karpis gang, son of Ma Barker (killed 1935)
 * December 16 – Margaret Mead, cultural anthropologist and author (died 1978)

Deaths

 * January 6 – James W. Bradbury, United States Senator from Maine from 1847 to 1853 (born 1802)
 * January 16
 * Murray Hall, born Mary Anderson, bail bondsman and politician (born 1841 in Scotland)
 * Hiram Rhodes Revels, first African American senator (born 1827)
 * January 21 – Elisha Gray, inventor and co-founder of Western Electric Manufacturing Company (born 1835)
 * January 29 – Alexander H. Jones, Congressional Representative from North Carolina (born 1822)
 * February 7 – Rowena Granice Steele, first female novelist in California (born 1824)
 * February 18 – Anna Gardner, abolitionist (born 1816)
 * March 7 – Ruth Alice Armstrong, American social activist (born 1850)
 * March 13 – Benjamin Harrison, 23rd president of the United States from 1889 to 1893 and U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1881 to 1887 (born 1833)
 * March 18 – Patrick Donahoe, businessman, publisher of the Boston Catholic newspaper The Pilot (born 1811)
 * April 10 – Harriet Newell Kneeland Goff, reformer (born 1828)
 * April 19 – Alfred Horatio Belo, newswriter and businessman, founder of The Dallas Morning News (born 1839)
 * April 26 – Harriett Ellen Grannis Arey, educator (born 1819)
 * June 2 – James A. Herne, playwright and actor (born 1839)
 * July 4
 * John Fiske, historian and philosopher (born 1842)
 * Julian Scott, artist and Civil War Medal of Honor recipient (born 1846)
 * July 7 – Eva M. Reed, botanist (born ?)
 * July 30 – Herbert Baxter Adams, educator and historian (born 1850)
 * August 4 – Harriet Pritchard Arnold, author (born 1858)
 * August 24 – Clara Maass, nurse (born 1876)
 * September 14 – William McKinley, 25th president of the United States from 1897 to 1901 (born 1843)
 * October 10 – Lorenzo Snow, 5th president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (born 1814)
 * October 21 – James A. Walker, Confederate general and US Congressman (born 1832)
 * October 29 – Leon Czolgosz, assassin of President William McKinley (born 1873)
 * November 8 – Mary Ann Bickerdyke, nurse and hospital administrator for Union soldiers (born 1817)
 * November 26 – John Denny, buffalo soldier and Medal of Honor recipient (born 1846)
 * November 27 – Clement Studebaker, automobile manufacturer (born 1831)