Documents in Year 1876                     

Links of Interest:

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

(1869-1877)

• Closest Presidential Election in History - Rutherford Birchard Hayes

(19th President) elected by one vote in the electoral college even though he didn't have the popular vote. President Hayes pulled troops out of the South ending the reconstruction era.

• Statehood:

  Colorado(38 of 50 States) Admitted 1 Aug 1876

• Literature: Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) publishes The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

  • Biography - learn about Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)

  • Memory Game - test what you remember about Mark Twain

  
  

• National Parks - John Muir

John Muir (1838-1914) was America's most famous and influential naturalist and conservationist. He is one of California's most important historical personalities. He has been called "The Father of our National Parks," "Wilderness Prophet," and "Citizen of the Universe." As early as 1876, he urged the federal government to adopt a forest conservation policy through articles published in popular periodicals. In 1892 he founded the Sierra Club. In 1901, Muir published Our National Parks, the book that brought him to the attention of President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1903, Roosevelt visited Muir in Yosemite. There, together, beneath the trees, they laid the foundation of Roosevelt's innovative and notable conservation programs.

• Native Americans 1876-77:

Black Hills War between U.S. and Plains Indians (Great Plains)
Viola, Herman I, North American Indians, Crown Publishers, New York: New York, 1996

Lt. Colonel George Custer and the 7th U.S. Cavalry battle the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians on the bluffs above the Little Big Horn River, on June 26, 1876.

• Technology:

Transportation

Brooklyn Bridge

July: New York tower is completed and anchorages are finished. Aug 25: E.F. Farrington crosses the river on the traveler rope. 7 years down, 7 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.

---

World Fair celebrating Centennial of American Independence (100 years)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. 1876

(10 May - 10 November)
1st of 8 World Fairs held in America - 1876, 1893, 1904, 1915, 1933, 1939, 1962, 1964

Location: Fairmount Park (284.5 acres)

Architectural Wonder: largest exhibition building yet constructed, rectangular with 250 out buildings connected by a geometrically designed courtyard.

Visitors: 9.9 million

Novelties: The Declaration of Independence, the giant hand and torch of the Statue of Liberty (still under construction), the sewing machine, the telephone, the typewriter

Mattie, Erik World's Fairs Princeton Architectural Press, 1998, New York: New York.

Previous 1873

Next 1878