- Jan 2 Roger Weightman Hanson, American Brigadier General (Confederate Army), dies in Battle of Murfreesboro at 35
- Jan 9 Ferdinand Huber, Swiss composer, dies at 71
- Jan 10 Lyman Beecher, US Presbyterian clergyman, temperance movement leader (b. 1775)
- Jan 15 David Rumph Jones, American Major General (Confederate Army), dies at 37
- Jan 17 Horace Vernet, French painter of battles and Orientalist subjects, dies at 73