1891

1891 was the 20th year after the founding of the City of Birmingham.

Events

• February 18: Oneonta was incorporated.
• April 16: President Benjamin Harrison delivered a speech at Capitol Park.
• May 6: Pell City in St Clair County was incorporated.
• May: The Southern Baptist Convention held a conference at the O'Brien Opera House.
• June 12: Charles Swinney gave a balloon demonstration at Lakeview Park.
• September 26: A traveling medicine salesman ascended by hot air balloon from a vacant lot at 1st Avenue North and 19th Street. A spectator had his leg caught in the rope and was carried aloft, but was uninjured.
• The Alabama Mineral Exposition Building was demolished.
• The Birmingham Public Library re-opened under the auspices of the Birmingham Board of Education, using a large room in the Enslen Building.
• Mercy Home was founded by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.
• Hudgins' fountain was moved to Capitol Park.
• The No. 1 South Bessemer streetcar line was electrified.
• Woodlawn was incorporated.

Business

• February 12: The Birmingham Railway & Electric Company absorbed the Bessemer and Birmingham Railroad.
• October 10: The Birmingham Railway & Electric Company began operating Birmingham's first electric streetcar.
• The Birmingham Labor Advocate switched from daily to weekly publication.
• The original Golden Rule Bar-B-Q opened in what is now Irondale.

Religion

• October 18: South Highland Presbyterian Church was incorporated.
• Isaac Hochstadter succeeded acting president Aaron Stern as president of Temple Emanu-El.
• Thornton Whaling became pastor of South Highland Presbyterian Church.

Individuals

Octavus Roy Cohen

Births

• June 10: Frank Hartley Anderson, architect and artist
• June 18: Luther Hollums, Birmingham Police Chief
• June 26: Octavus Roy Cohen, author
• November 24: Ben Gross, radio critic
• Jenks Gillem, college football coach
• Jimmy Morgan, President of the Birmingham City Commission

Graduations

• June 26: William Leslie Welton from high school in Lynn, Massachusetts.

Marriages

• May 5: Nathaniel Barrett to the former Annie Pearl Troup.

Deaths

• March 9: Josiah Morris, co-founder of Birmingham
• Mary Anderson Parker, first wife of A. H. Parker

Works

1890 architects' rendering of First Methodist

Buildings

• Birmingham Water Works Dam
• First United Methodist Church
• Third Presbyterian Church, destroyed by fire April 17, 1901
• Trinity Methodist Church (Southside), demolished c. 1926

Context

In 1891, The Chilean Civil War was fought. The first working escalator ("inclined elevator") is invented. The Wrigley Company was founded in Chicago. The London-Paris telephone system was opened. The Music Hall in New York (now known as Carnegie Hall) had its grand opening. The first public demonstration of a prototype Kinetoscope was given at Thomas Edison's lab. Stanford University in California opened. Asteroid 323 Brucia became the first asteroid discovered using photography. James Naismith invented basketball. Nikola Tesla invented the Tesla coil.

Notable books published in 1891 included The White Company by Arthur Conan Doyle, Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, L'Argent by Émile Zola. Notable music released included "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay" by Henry J. Sayers, "The Laughing Song" by George W. Johnson, and Fantasy Pieces for Oboe and Piano by Carl Nielsen.

Notable births in 1891 included physicist Walther Bothe, Chief Justice Earl Warren, composer Cole Porter, wrestler Man Mountain Dean, and writer Henry Miller. Notable deaths included Union General William Tecumseh Sherman, painter Georges Seurat, showman P. T. Barnum, poet and essayist James Russell Lowell, inventor Pierre Lallement, and novelist Herman Melville.

1890s

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