Historical Events
Continental Army bars Blacks
Oct 8 Officers decide to bar slaves and free blacks from the Continental Army
Phillis Wheatley Freed
Oct 18 African-American poet Phillis Wheatley freed from slavery
- Oct 27 US Navy forms as the Continental Navy
Famous Birthdays
- Oct 12 Lyman Beecher, US Presbyterian clergyman, temperance movement leader, born in New Haven, Connecticut (d. 1863)
- Oct 15 Bernhard Henrik Crusell, Swedish-Finnish composer, born in Uusikaupunki, Finland (d. 1838)
- Oct 21 Guiseppi Baini, Italian priest, conductor, and sacred music composer, born in Rome (d. 1844)
- Oct 27 Traugott Maximilian Eberwein, German composer, born in Weimar, Germany (d. 1831)
Famous Deaths
- Oct 2 Chiyo-ni, Japanese poet (b. 1703)
- Oct 18 Christian August Crusius, German philosopher and theologian (b. 1715)
- Oct 21 Peyton Randolph, American founding father and president of the Continental Congress, dies at 54
