Year 1819 Fun Facts, Trivia, and Historical Events

This quick read presents a collection of fun facts, trivia, and historical events from the year 1819. Discover the year’s top news stories, most influential people, historic firsts, famous birthdays, retail prices, and much more.

Take a journey through history in just minutes.

1. President of the United States: James Monroe (DR-Virginia)
2. Vice President: Daniel D. Tompkins (DR-New York)
3. Chief Justice of the Supreme Court: John Marshall (Virginia)
4. Speaker of the House of Representatives: Henry Clay (DR-Kentucky)
5. In 1819, the 15th U.S. Congress was in session until March 4. On March 4, the 16th U.S. Congress convened. Both chambers—the United States Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives—had a Democratic-Republican majority.
6. Inflation rate: 0.00%
7. Consumer price index (CPI): 12.700
8. $100.00 in 1819 “is equivalent in purchasing power to about $2,552.14 today, an increase of $2,452.14 over 207 years. The dollar had an average inflation rate of 1.58% per year between 1819 and today, producing a cumulative price increase of 2,452.14%. This means that today's prices are 25.52 times as high as average prices since 1819, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index. A dollar today only buys 3.918% of what it could buy back then.” In other words, the U.S. dollar has lost about 96% of its value since 1819.
9. American companies and brands established in 1819 included Dematic, Old Stone Bank, and the Tremont Nail Company.
10. In 1819, the average life expectancy at birth in the U.S. was 40 to 45 years because of a high infant mortality rate. Americans who survived childhood often lived into their 50s, 60s, and even 70s.
11. In 1819, there were 22 U.S. states. In order of admission to the Union, they were Delaware (1787), Pennsylvania (1787), New Jersey (1787), Georgia (1788), Connecticut (1788), Massachusetts (1788), Maryland (1788), South Carolina (1788), New Hampshire (1788), Virginia (1788), New York (1788), North Carolina (1789), Rhode Island (1790), Vermont (1791), Kentucky (1792), Tennessee (1796), Ohio (1803), Louisiana (1812), Indiana (1816), Mississippi (1817), Illinois (1818), and Alabama (1819).
12. 10 most populated U.S. cities in 1819: New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston, Charleston (South Carolina), Northern Liberties (a neighborhood in North Philadelphia), New Orleans, Southwark (a neighborhood in South Philadelphia), Salem (Massachusetts), and Albany (New York). (Just so you know, Northern Liberties and Southwark both became part of the City of Philadelphia in 1854.)
13. On January 2, the Panic of 1819, a major economic crisis in the United States that lasted until 1823, began to unfold. During the financial downturn, the growth in commerce that followed the War of 1812 ended, agricultural prices dropped, numerous banks failed, mortgages were foreclosed, and unemployment rose nationwide. Multiple factors contributed to the panic, including the role played by the Second Bank of the United States, which began to “aggressively” call in loans and “demand repayment in gold and silver, causing further instability among state banks that had relied on issuing banknotes.”
14. On January 25, Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, founded the University of Virginia.
15. On February 22, the Adams-Onis Treaty, also known as the Florida Purchase Treaty, was signed into law. The treaty was an agreement between the United States and Spain “by which Spain ceded Florida to the United States,” and “the United States renounced its claims to Texas.”
16. On March 1, the U.S. naval vessel USS Columbus was launched on the Potomac River in Washington, DC.
17. On March 2, Congress created the Arkansas Territory out of the Missouri Territory after Missouri petitioned for statehood.
18. On March 2, Congress passed the Steerage Act, one of the first immigration laws in the United States. The law regulated the conditions of passenger ships and also required ship captains to deliver a passenger manifest to the U.S. government.
19. On March 20, London’s famous Burlington Arcade opened and became the world’s first shopping arcade.
20. On March 28, Sir Joseph William Bazalgette, a British civil engineer, was born. He created London’s sewerage system.
21. On April 15, Oliver Evans, an American inventor and automation pioneer, passed away. He designed the first automatic flour mill.
22. May 22 to June 20: The American steamship, SS Savannah, sailed from Savannah, Georgia, to Liverpool, England, and was the first steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean.
23. On July 3, New York City’s first savings bank, the Bank for Savings in the City of New York, opened for business.
24. On August 1, the American author Herman Melville was born in New York City. He is best known for his novels Billy Budd, Moby-Dick, and Typee.
25. On August 6, Captain Alden Partridge founded Norwich University, the first private military school in the United States.
26. On August 9, William Thomas Green Morton, a pioneering American dentist and anesthesiologist, was born in Charlton, Massachusetts. He became the first dentist to use ether (letheon) during a tooth extraction.
27. In September, two New England whaling ships, the Equator and the Balena, arrived at Kealakekua Bay in Hawaii, marking the beginning of the whaling era in the future Aloha State.
28. On September 1, American inventor Jethro Wood received a U.S. patent for a cast-iron plow with interchangeable parts.
29. On September 6, the American inventor Thomas Blanchard received a U.S. patent for a lathe.
30. On September 8, the Philadelphia Balloon Riot, a violent uprising at the Vauxhall Garden in Center City Philadelphia, took place during a balloon release. According to Grokipedia.com, the uproar ignited “when private guards employed by the garden's proprietors assaulted and beat unconscious a young boy who had climbed a fence in an attempt to observe the event without purchasing admission, prompting an enraged mob of onlookers—largely working-class spectators frustrated by the exclusionary pricing—to overrun the premises. Hundreds of participants tore down fences, dismantled the balloon apparatus, and set fires that consumed parts of the garden's pavilions and structures, resulting in what contemporary accounts described as a conflagration.”
31. On September 21, William W. Bibb was sworn in as the first governor of Alabama.
32. On October 23, the first ship sailed through the Erie Canal, from Rome, New York, to Utica, New York.
33. On December 14, Alabama became the 22nd U.S. state.
34. In 1819, John Skinner of Baltimore began editing and publishing the weekly agricultural periodical, American Farmer, which later became the first successful agricultural publication in the United States.
35. The New York State legislature created the New York State Board of Agriculture, the first agricultural organization of its kind in the U.S.
36. Key fiction works published during 1819 included Ann Hatton’s The Oath of Vengeance, Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, and Washington Irving’s The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (Just so you know, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. contains two of Washington Irving’s best-known short stories, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle.)
37. Key poems published during 1819 were Barry Cornwall’s Dramatic Scenes and Other Poems, John Keats’ La Belle Dame sans Merci (The Beautiful Lady without Mercy), John Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale, Lord Byron’s Don Juan, Lord Byron’s Mazappa, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s England in 1819, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Men of England, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s The Witch of Atlas, and Thomas Campbell’s Specimens of the British Poets.
38. Key dramatic works for the year included Percy Bysshe Shelley’s The Cenci and William Abbot’s Swedish Patriotism.
39. Famous people born during 1819 included Clara Schumann (pianist), Edwin Drake (entrepreneur), Elias Howe (entrepreneur), George Eliot (novelist), Herman Melville (novelist), John Ruskin (novelist), Queen Victoria (Queen of the United Kingdom), Samuel Brannan (journalist), Susan Warner (children’s author), and Walt Whitman (poet).
40. Notable people who died in 1819 included James Watt (inventor), Oliver Evans (inventor), and Sophie Blanchard (professional balloonist).
41. In 1819 as well, the words “ad-lib,” “bilingual,” “blasé,” “Christian Brother,” “conversationalist,” “custom-made,” “dermatology,” “dirt cheap,” “freelance,” “no-show,” “out-of-doors,” “public domain,” “red-handed,” “rodeo,” and “streetlight” all appeared in print for the first time.
42. Two bushels of buckwheat: $1.00
43. Two bushels of salt: $3.50
44. One bushel of corn: 75 cents
45. One bushel of potatoes: 50 cents
46. 11 pounds and eight ounces of honey: $1.50
47. 14 pounds and eight ounces of veal at six cents a pound: 86 cents
48. 18 pounds of rye flour at 4½ cents a pound: 81 cents
49. Eight pounds and four ounces of salt pork at 14 cents per pound: $1.15
50. Four bushels of rye: $3.00
51. One ton of plaster: $17.00
52. Two shad: 36 cents (The American shad is “a species of anadromous clupeid fish” that is found on the North American coast from Newfoundland to Florida.)
53. Two tons of hay: $10.00
54. Wages for 10 days of tailoring: $8.00
55. Wages for one day of picking stones: 50 cents
56. Wages for two days of mowing: $1.50

References:

1. https://www.foodreference.com/html/html/food-timeline-1811.html
2. https://www.famousbirthdays.com/year/1819.html
3. https://www.famousbirthdays.com/deceased/1819.html
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1819_in_literature
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1819_in_the_United_States
6. https://www.onthisday.com/events/date/1819
7. https://www.infoplease.com/history/world/1800-1899-ad-world-history
8. https://www.merriam-webster.com/time-traveler/1819
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_date_of_admission_to_the_Union
10. https://www.in2013dollars.com/inflation-rate-in-1819
11. https://www.officialdata.org/us/inflation/1819?amount=1

Disclaimer: In writing and editing this article, Gregory DeVictor has made every effort to ensure historical accuracy and not to mislead his audience. In addition, the contents of this article, including text, graphics, and captions, are for general informational purposes only.

©2026 Gregory DeVictor