Timeline: 1891 – 1940

• First Lady Sallie Hogg requests the first wallpaper for the Mansion.
  
• Hogg is the first native Texan elected governor.
  
• Internal combustion engine patented.
  
• Henry Ford completes his first car.
  
• First full performance of ballet Swan Lake, music by Tchaikovsky.

Governor: James Stephen Hogg

• Utah becomes a state of the US
• William McKinley becomes US President.
  
• Spanish-American War.

Governor: Charles A. Culberson

• First major redecoration of the Governor’s Mansion by First Lady Lena Sayers.
  
• Electric lights installed in the Mansion for the first time.
  
• The Galveston hurricane of 1901 kills an estimated 6,000 and devastates most of the city.
• Boxer Rebellion in China.
  
• Oil discovered at Spindletop, Texas in 1901.

Governor: Joseph D. Sayers

• The Wright Brothers make the first airplane flight at Kitty Hawk, NC.
  
• Theodore Roosevelt becomes President of the US, 1905.
  
• The speed limit is set at 20 m.p.h. in Britain.
  
• O’Henry’s stories published as a book, Cabbages and Kings.
  
• Russo-Japanese War breaks out in 1904.
  
• Picasso completes his cubist painting Demoiselles d’Avignon.

Governor: Samuel W. T. Lanham

• Colquitt is the first governor of Texas with an automobile.
  
• The Houston Ship Channel opens.
  
• Fall of the Manchu Dynasty in China; a republic forms with Sun Yat-sen as president.
  
• Marie Curie wins the Nobel Prize in chemistry, 1911.
  
• Arizona and New Mexico become US states.
  
• Over 1,500 die when the Titantic sinks in 1912.
  
• Woodrow Wilson becomes the 28th US president.
  
• The First World War begins in Europe, 1914.
• Major structural addition to the Governor’s Mansion, 1914, includes a modern kitchen, a family dining room, and additional rooms upstairs.

Governor: Oscar Branch Colquitt

• Lt. Governor Hobby sworn in as Governor on Sept. 26, 1917, replacing Ferguson.
  
• U. S. joins the Allies in World War I, declaring war on Germany, Hungary and Austria.
  
• Armistice ending the world war signed on November 11, 1918.
  
• Publication of My Antonia by Willa Cather.
  
• Ratification of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution banning alcoholic beverages.
  
• Jack Dempsey becomes the world heavyweight boxing champion.
  
• US President Woodrow Wilson wins the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919.
  
• French painter Henri Matisse completes his painting L’Odalisque.
  
• Edith Wharton’s novel, The Age of Innocence, wins the Pulitzer Prize in 1921.
  
• Warren G. Harding inaugurated as the 29th president of the US

Governor: William Pettus Hobby

• “Ma” Ferguson becomes the first woman governor of Texas, the second in the US 
• Publication of The Great Gatsby, a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
  
• Founding of the Chrysler Corporation.
  
• Hirohito becomes Emperor of Japan.
  
• Publication of Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne.
  
• The opera Turandot, by Puccini, debuts at La Scala in Milan.
  
• Firing of the first liquid fuel rocket by Robert H. Goddard of the US.

Governor: Miriam A. Ferguson

• Charles Lindbergh flies non-stop in Spirit of St. Louis from New York to Paris.
  
• Walt Disney presents the first Mickey Mouse films.
  
• Composer Maurice Ravel completes his orchestral piece Bolero.
  
• Discovery of the penicillin drug by Alexander Fleming.
  
• American aviator Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly across the Atlantic.
  
• The city Constantinople is renamed Istanbul.
  
• The US stock market crashes on October 24, 1929.

Governor: Dan Moody

• Release of the film Frankenstein, with actor Boris Karloff as the title character.
  
• Population of the U. S. approximately 122 million.
  
• Unemployment reaches 13.7 million in the US and over 350,000 in Texas.
  
• Franklin D. Roosevelt becomes the 32nd US President.
  
• Adolph Hitler becomes the Chancellor of Germany.
  
• Opening of the Chicago World’s Fair.

Governor: Ross S. Sterling

• Historic American Buildings Survey photographs the Mansion and grounds.
  
• The US goes off the gold standard for its currency.
  
• Repeal of the Prohibition amendment to the US Constitution
• Frank Capra directs Academy Award winner It Happened One Night with Clark Gable.
  
• Current popular songs in the US include Blue Moon and All Through the Night.
  
• Plebiscite in Germany favors Hitler as Fuhrer.
  
• Debut of Gershwin’s opera, Porgy and Bess.
  
• Iran becomes the new name for Persia.

Governor: Miriam A. Ferguson

• Birth of Sam Houston Allred, second governor’s child born in the Mansion.
  
• First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt visits the Mansion during a trip to Austin.
  
• U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act.
  
• Neville Chamberlin takes office as Prime Minister of Great Britain.
  
• Disney releases the animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
  
• Patent for nylon obtained for the American chemical company, du Pont.
  
• Japan installs a puppet government for China in Nanking, controls several major cities.
  
• Germany invades Austria.
  
• American author Pearl S. Buck wins the Nobel Prize for Literature.
  
• The play Our Town by Thornton Wilder wins the Pulitzer Prize for drama.

Governor: James V. Allred