Federal government edit

• President: Zachary Taylor (W-Kentucky) (until July 9), Millard Fillmore (W-New York) (starting July 9)
• Vice President: Millard Fillmore (W-New York) (until July 9), vacant (starting July 9)
• Chief Justice: Roger B. Taney (Maryland)
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Howell Cobb (D-Georgia)
• Congress: 31st

January–March edit

• January – Sacramento floods.^[1]
• January 29 – Henry Clay introduces the Compromise of 1850 to Congress.
• January 31 – The University of Rochester is chartered in Rochester, New York; it admits its first students in November^[2]
• c. January–February – The Liberty Head double eagle first issued for commerce.
• February 8–17 – Battle at Fort Utah: The Nauvoo Legion kills Timpanogos hostile to the Mormon settlement at Fort Utah on the orders of Brigham Young.
• February 28 – The University of Utah opens in Salt Lake City.
• March 7 – United States Senator Daniel Webster gives his "Seventh of March" speech, in which he endorses the Compromise of 1850, in order to prevent a possible civil war.
• March 16 – Nathaniel Hawthorne's historical novel The Scarlet Letter is published in Boston, Massachusetts.
• March 19 – American Express is founded by Henry Wells and William Fargo.

April–June edit

• April 4 – Los Angeles is incorporated as a city in California.
• April 15 – San Francisco is incorporated as a city in California.
• April 19 – Clayton–Bulwer Treaty is signed by the United States and Great Britain, allowing both countries to share Nicaragua and not claim complete control over the proposed Nicaragua Canal.
• May 7 – The brigantine USS Advance is loaned to the United States Navy.
• May 23 – The USS Advance puts to sea from New York City to search for Franklin's lost expedition in the Arctic.
• June – Harper's Magazine published as a new monthly in New York City.
• June 1 – The 1850 United States census shows that 11.2% of the population classed as "Negro" are of mixed race.
• June 3 – Traditional date of Kansas City, Missouri's founding: it is incorporated by Jackson County, Missouri as the "Town of Kansas".

July–September edit

• July 1 – St. Mary's Institute (the future University of Dayton) admits its first pupils in Dayton, Ohio.
• July 9 – President Zachary Taylor dies in office; Vice President Millard Fillmore becomes the 13th president of the United States.
• July 10 – President Fillmore is sworn in.
• July 14 – John Gorrie makes the first public demonstration of his ice-making machine, in Apalachicola, Florida.^[3]
• September 9
  • California is admitted to the Union as the 31st state (see History of California and An Act for the Admission of the State of California).
  • Utah Territory is established.
  • New Mexico Territory is organized by order of the U.S. Congress.
• September 18 – The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 is passed by the U.S. Congress. Harriet Tubman becomes an official conductor of the Underground Railroad.

October–December edit

• October 19 – Phi Kappa Sigma International Fraternity founded at the University of Pennsylvania.
• October 28 – Delegate Edward Ralph May delivers a speech on behalf of African American suffrage to the Indiana Constitutional Convention.

Undated edit

• The American system of watch manufacturing starts in Roxbury, Massachusetts, with the Waltham Watch Company.
• Mayer Lehman arrives from Germany to join his siblings in Lehman Brothers merchant business in Montgomery, Alabama.
• Allan Pinkerton forms the North-Western Police Agency, later the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, in Chicago.
• Astronomer Maria Mitchell becomes the first woman member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
• The temperance organization, International Organisation of Good Templars, is established in Utica, New York, as the order of the Knights of Jericho.
• One of the original segments of the historic Pacific Highway in Washington (state) in Clark and Cowlitz counties is established.^[4]

Ongoing edit

• California Gold Rush (1848–1855)

• January 1 – John Barclay Armstrong, Texas Ranger lieutenant and a U.S. Marshal (died 1913)
• January 10 – John Wellborn Root, Chicago architect (died 1891)
• January 18 – Seth Low, educator (died 1916)
• January 24 – Mary Noailles Murfree, novelist (died 1922)
• January 27 – Samuel Gompers, labor union leader (died 1924)
• January 28 – Edward Merritt Hughes, U.S. Navy officer (died 1903)
• February 1 – Emma Churchman Hewitt, author and journalist (died 1921)
• February 2 – Cassius Aurelius Boone, Mayor of Orlando and businessman (died 1917)
• February 6 – Elizabeth Williams Champney, author (died 1922)^[5]
• February 8
  • Kate Chopin, writer (died 1904)^[6]
  • Charles Rockwell Lanman, Sanskrit scholar (died 1941)
• February 15 – Albert B. Cummins, U.S. Senator from Iowa from 1908 to 1926 (died 1926)
• February 27
  • Henry E. Huntington, railroad pioneer and art collector (died 1927)
  • Laura E. Richards, author (died 1943)
• March 9 – Daniel B. Towner, hymn composer (died 1919)
• March 26 – Edward Bellamy, Utopian novelist and socialist (died 1898)^[7]
• March 31 – Charles Doolittle Walcott, invertebrate paleontologist (died 1927)
• April 3 – Zina P. Young Card, Mormon leader and women's rights activist (died 1931)
• April 8 – John Peters, baseball player (died 1924)
• April 10 – Mary Emilie Holmes, geologist and educator (died 1906)
• April 11
  • Rosetta Luce Gilchrist, physician and author (died 1921)
  • Isidor Rayner, U.S. senator from Maryland from 1905 to 1912 (died 1912)
• April 18 – Joseph Labadie, labor organizer (died 1933)
• April 20 – Daniel Chester French, sculptor (died 1931)
• April 30
  • Ruth Alice Armstrong, temperance activist (died 1901)
  • Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller, novelist (died 1937)^[8]
• May 8 – Ross Barnes, baseball player and manager (died 1915)
• May 12 – Henry Cabot Lodge, statesman (died 1924)
• May 14 – Alva Adams, 3-time Governor of Colorado (died 1922)
• June 3 – Albert M. Todd, businessman and politician (died 1931)
• June 5 – Pat Garrett, bartender and sheriff (died 1908)
• June 15 – Charles Hazelius Sternberg, paleontologist (died 1943)
• June 18
  • Cyrus H. K. Curtis, magazine publisher (died 1933)^[9]
  • Alice Moore McComas, author, editor, lecturer and reformer (died 1919)^[10]
• June 21 – Daniel Carter Beard, Scouting pioneer (died 1941)
• July 2 – Robert Ridgway, ornithologist (died 1929)
• July 7 – William E. Mason, U.S. Senator from Illinois from 1897 to 1903 (died 1921)
• July 8 – Charles Rockwell Lanman, Sanskrit scholar (died 1941)
• July 11 – Annie Armstrong, Baptist leader (died 1938)
• July 12 – Newell Sanders, businessman and politician (died 1938)
• July 18 – Rose Hartwick Thorpe, poet (died 1939)
• July 20 – John G. Shedd, businessman (died 1926)
• July 25 – Lydia J. Newcomb Comings, educator (died 1946)
• July 28 – William Whittingham Lyman, vintner (died 1921)
• July 31 – Robert Love Taylor, Tennessee congressman (died 1912)
• August 28 – Charles H. Aldrich, Solicitor General of the U.S. (died 1929)
• September 2 – Eugene Field, poet and essayist (died 1895)
• September 6 – Marion Howard Brazier, journalist (died 1935)
• October 1
  • David R. Francis, politician (died 1927)
  • Thomas Vincent Welch, politician (died 1903)
• October 14 – Newton E. Mason, rear admiral (died 1945)
• October 30 – John Patton, Jr., U.S. Senator from Michigan from 1894 to 1895 (died 1907)
• November 5 – Ella Wheeler Wilcox, poet (died 1919)
• November 18 – John S. Armstrong, real estate developer (died 1908)
• December 9 – Emma Abbott, operatic soprano (died 1891)
• December 21 – William Wallace Lincoln, third son of Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln (died 1862)
• December 23 – Louise Reed Stowell, scientist and author (died 1932)^[11]
• December 25 – Florence Griswold, art curator (died 1937)

• February 1 – Edward Baker Lincoln, second son of Abraham Lincoln (born 1846)
• March 3 – Oliver Cowdery, religious leader (born 1806)
• March 21 – Miguel Pedrorena, early settler of San Diego, California (born c. 1808)
• March 28 – Gerard Brandon, fourth and sixth governor of Mississippi from 1825 to 1826 and from 1826 to 1832 (born 1788)
• March 31 – John C. Calhoun, seventh vice president of the United States from 1825 to 1832 (born 1782)
• April 12 – Adoniram Judson, Congregationalist and later Baptist missionary (born 1788)
• April 24 – John Norvell, U.S. Senator from Michigan from 1837 to 1841 (born 1789)
• May 16 – William Hendricks, U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1825 to 1837 (born 1782)
• July 9 – Zachary Taylor, 12th president of the United States from 1849 to 1850 (born 1784)
• July 19 – Margaret Fuller, journalist, literary critic and women's rights advocate, presumed drowned (born 1810)
• November 19 – Richard Mentor Johnson, ninth vice president of the United States from 1837 to 1841, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1819 to 1829 (born 1780)

• Timeline of United States history (1820–1859)

•   Media related to 1850 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons