Documents in Year 1870                     

Links of Interest:

• America's Founding Primary Source Documents:

1870 - Amendment XV in the Bill of Rights -  Right to vote by any race, color, or previous condition of servitude

• Ulysses S. Grant, Eighteenth U.S. President

(1869-1877)

• U.S. Census Overview 1870

• U.S. Census Fast Facts 1870

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• Education: Secondary (High School)

"In the years after the Civil War, a number of factors came together to create a greater demand for secondary education: population growth due in large part to increased immigration and a rapid growth in industry and technological change, which intensified the demand for skilled workers." A dramatic increase in the number of public high schools went from about "500 in 1870 to 6,000 in 1900. During the 1880s the number of high schools increased tenfold and surpassed the number of academies. By the end of the century, free public high schools had pushed out the majority of fee-paying academies. Although still only a small percentage of the eligible population attended high school, in 1900 more than half a million students were enrolled and 62,000 graduated."

Source: Foundations of American Education, Sixth Edition page 137. / L. Dean Webb, Arlene Metha. Published by Pearson Education. 2010

Education: Higher (College)

Morrill Act established Land-grant Industrial colleges to meet the needs of farmers and laborers to improve their social and economic status. 65 new land-grant colleges were established including:
University of Maine (1865)
University of Illinois (1867)
University of West Virginia (1867)
University of California (1868)
Purdue University (1869)
University of Nebraska (1869)

Ohio University (1870)

University of Arkansas (1871)
Texas A&M  University (1871)

Source: Foundations of American Education, Sixth Edition page 140-141 / L. Dean Webb, Arlene Metha. Published by Pearson Education. 2010 see 1871 for next event...

• Literature: Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) married Livy Langdon, 24-year old genteel daughter of a rich New York coal merchant.

  • Biography - learn about Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)

  • Memory Game - test what you remember about Mark Twain

  
  

• Technology: The National Weather Service issues its first weather forecast on November 1, 1870.
  The forecast warns of a windy day in Chicago, IL.

  • Brooklyn Bridge

  Brooklyn caisson is launched and towed into position.  Digging begins.  Fire on Dec 1 in caisson delays work by several months. 1 year down, 13 to go to finish.
  It's magnificent twin towers, breathtaking span, cutting edge technology, and sheer beauty make Brooklyn Bridge the grandest, and perhaps the most important structure built in America during the nineteenth century. It was called "the eighth wonder of the world."
  Curlee, Lynn Brooklyn Bridge New York: Atheneum Books, 2001.