1901

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Ongoing events

• Progressive Era (1890s–1920s)
• Temperance Movement

Events

• Janury 1 – Beginning of the 20th (twentieth) century; a century that began on January 1, 1901 and ended on December 31, 2000.

• January 10 – At the January meeting of the City Council, Mr. A. V. Conway was elected as member of the Council to fill the vacancy from the First Ward.
• January 12 – Engineer William Herbert McCartney is killed in the wreck of a Chesapeake and Ohio train in the Alberene branch of the James River Division in Albemarle County.
• February 16 – In a special session, the General Assembly passed the necessary legislation for the state constitutional convention.
• March 11 – At nine o’clock this evening, City Treasurer John L. Walters was shot and killed by his brother-in-law, Stuart R. Bailey received three wounds. The two men got into a “difficulty” at the Walters residence on Ridge Street, drew their revolvers and emptied them at each other. Walters was shot five times.
• April 13 – Thomas Jefferson’s birthday, the first building of the University of Virginia Hospital opened. UVA dedicated its first hospital: a 25-bed building with three operating rooms.
• Spring – UVA School of Nursing founded.
• May 23 – The first city election under the 1899-1900 Charter was held for the Charlottesville City Council Board of Aldermen; County Board of Supervisors; and delegates the Virginia Constitutional Convention. William H. Boaz and James H. Lindsay were elected to represent Albemarle County and the City of Charlottesville as delegates. One hundred members, from House of Delegates districts, met from June 12, 1901 to June 26, 1902.
• June 12 – Beginning of the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1902: Eighty-eight Democrats and twelve Republicans (one calling himself an independent) met in Richmond in two sessions between June 12, 1901, and June 26, 1902. An elected body of one hundred delegates, including eleven Republican and one Independent, convened in Richmond on June 12, 1901, and debated for almost a year, until June 26, 1902.
• July 2 – The first meeting of the new city council elected in May was held.
• September 6 – William McKinley, the 25th president of the United States, was shot on the grounds of the Pan-American Exposition at the Temple of Music in Buffalo, New York, six months into his second term.
• September 19 – During the funeral service of William McKinley, all activity ceased in the nation for five minutes - trains came to a halt, telephone and telegraph service was stopped when President McKinley was taken from his home on North Market Street for the last time.

• November 12 – University of Virginia students hold mass meeting to protest the arrest of their classmates over the previous weekend. Faculty chairman P.B. Barringer led the event and said: "Ordinarily, cases of this kind do not interest me seriously for the students can very rarely violate a city ordinance without infringing the moral law, but the seeming tendency to aggression on the part of the city police of late, deserves more than a passing notice...To suddenly clothe a man with power, even a good man, is to seriously strain his poise and character, while to give a man, half a fool, a uniform, a badge, a 'billy," is to seriously detract from both his intelligence and his moral sense."

Ongoing

State Events

• A small convention assembled in the basement of Richmond’s Second Baptist Church and formed the Virginia Anti-Saloon League - a movement that brought Prohibition to the state in 1916. Local and statewide efforts were led by Methodist minister the Rev. James Cannon Jr. while local efforts were led by the Rev. J. W. West, field secretary of the Anti-Saloon League. On June 5, 1907, city residents cast their vote to make Charlottesville "dry." Nationwide prohibition did not take place until January of 1920 with the passage of the eighteenth amendment.

Deaths

• April 24 – Hon. John E. Massey passed away at his winter residence on Park Street. For a quarter of a century he had been a notable figure in Virginia politics, having served as the lieutenant governor of Virginia (1886–1890) and a member of the General Assembly (1873­–1879).

Images

• Images from 1901
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