1877

1877 was the sixth year after the founding of the city of Birmingham.

Events

• January 24: Cullman County was created by the Alabama Legislature from portions of Blount, Morgan, Walker and Winston counties.
• August 19: A fire occurred at the Relay House, but was extinguished before irreparable damage was done.
• November 12: The "Great Metropolitan Olympiad Congress of Educated Horses and Trained Animal Exposition" performed in Birmingham.
• Helena was incorporated.
• Sacred Heart Parish in Cullman was founded.

Business

• January 22: An English syndicate assumed control of the Alabama & Chattanooga Railroad, renaming it the Alabama Great Southern Railroad.
• Oxmoor Furnace No. 1 was rebuilt sixty feet tall with an iron stack.
• Joseph Riley Smith relocated his mercantile business to Birmingham.
• George R. Ward became proprietor of the Relay House.

Government

• March 5: John Tyler Morgan was sworn in to the U.S. Senate.
• September 20: John T. Reed succeeded R. H. Hagood as Jefferson County Sheriff.
• Obediah Berry became Mayor of Tuscaloosa for the second time.
• Rufus M. DeShazo succeeded Francis A. Nelson as Shelby County Sheriff.
• Hilary Herbert became Representative for the 2nd Congressional District of Alabama.
• J. B. Lollar succeeded G. H. Gultry as Walker County Sheriff.

Education

• The Toadvine School opened in Toadvine.

Religion

• I. H. Hendon succeeded A. J. Waldrop as pastor of First Baptist Church of Birmingham.
• Union Baptist Church was founded in Boldo.

Individuals

• November 7: Peyton Bowman married Marguerite Grenet in San Antonio, Texas.
• James Bowron and his father came to America to serve as managers at the Southern States Coal, Iron and Land Company.
• T. L. Hudgins relocated from Tuscaloosa to Birmingham and opened a general mercantile and wholesale grocery.

Pedro Gusman in 1921

Births

• January 8: Raimundo de Ovies, Episcopal priest
• January 26: Irvin Wilhelm, Birmingham Barons pitcher and manager
• January 30: Walter Henley, coal mine and bank executive
• June 2: Ollie Battle, sheriff's deputy
• July 10: Courtney Shropshire, physician
• October 3: William Warren, architect
• Lewis Barrett, briefly publisher of the Birmingham Age-Herald
• Frank Boykin, industrial accident victim
• Pedro Gusman, wallpaper hanger
• Frank McArthur, attorney and Birmingham Board of Education member
• Rubee Pearse, landscape architect
• Alice Rumph, painter

Graduations

• Tom Ashford from East Tennessee University
• Eugene Enslen from the Poughkeepsie Business College in New York
• Franklin Glass from Princeton University, bachelor's degree.

Deaths

• October 29: Nathan Bedford Forrest, Confederate army general
• Maria McAdory, wife of Chambers McAdory
• William Ketchum, proprietor of the Relay House

Context

In 1877, Emile Berliner invented the microphone. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake debuted. Crazy Horse surrendered to the U.S. Army. Henry Ossian Flipper became the first African American to graduate from the United States Military Academy at West Point. Asaph Hall discovered Deimos and Phobos, the moons of Mars. Thomas Edison announced and demonstrated his invention of the phonograph.

Notable books published in 1877 included The Dance of Death by Ambrose Bierce, Black Beauty by Anna Sewell, Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, The American Senator by Anthony Trollope, and Off on a Comet by Jules Verne. Notable music composed in 1877 included "Chopsticks" by Arthur de Lulli, the ballet La Bayadère by Leon Minkus, and the opera Samson et Dalila by Camille Saint-Saëns.

Notable births in 1877 included mathematician G. H. Hardy, French politician André Maginot, inventor Garrett Morgan, writer Hermann Hesse, motoring and aviation pioneer Charles Rolls, chemist Francis William Aston, jazz musician Buddy Bolden, actress Claire McDowell, and author William Hope Hodgson. Notable deaths included inventor Alexander Bain, entrepreneur Cornelius Vanderbilt, Mormon leader Brigham Young, Sioux chief Crazy Horse, photographer Henry Fox Talbot, and painter Gustave Courbet.

1870s

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