Jane Stanford Ensures Survival of Stanford U.

Leland Stanford 's Widow Helps the New California School to Thrive

Feb 6, 2009

On June 21, 1893, Leland Stanford died. His determined widow now took steps to forge the future success of the university they began to honor their deceased son.

The year Leland Stanford died, a great financial crisis gripped the nation. Mrs. Stanford did not have access to most of her late husband's great wealth because his estate was tied up in the courts. Some suggested that she close the university,at least temporarily, because the estate had not been settled and the country was going through difficult financial times. She spent about two weeks in seclusion before deciding to keep the university open.

In the meantime, Leland Stanford's life insurance policy paid her $11,782. She cut expenses. She gave the employees at Stanford's winery in Vina, California their final pay before eliminating their jobs. By August 1893, the number of Chinese laborers employed at the Palo Alto Stock Farm and the university had shrunk from 150 to about 10.

Jane Lathrop Stanford Slashes Expenses

The Probate Court awarded her $10,000 a month, ruling that technically the Stanford faculty were her personal servants. That amount was also her customary monthly household budget when she was Stanford's wife. She let other employees go, cutting her personal staff from 17 to three: a maid, a cook and a secretary. Her monthly personal expenses were said to be $350 after these cost-savings. When this widow of a railroad magnate traveled to the East coast free by rail, she eliminated hotel bills by living in her private car.

She struggled to pay the salaries of the university's professors, but by the end of August 1893 she had paid their June and July salaries, salaries being due on the first of the following month for the previous month's work. Some of Stanford's heirs pressured her for the quick release of what was bequeathed to them. In 1894 the U. S. government sued the estate for $15 million over an 1868 loan to start the Central Pacific Railroad of which her late husband was the president.

Her Religious Faith and Determination; Victorious in Court

According to Orrin Leslie Elliott in his book Stanford University: The First Twenty-Five Years (1937), Jane Lathrop Stanford wrote to her attorney In 1895: "Only my Father in Heaven knows all I have suffered and endured since my husband was called from my side, to keep the doors of the University open....I lived, prayed to live, for the good of this institution."

The federal government lost its case against the estate, the case going all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court. Now free to sell assets, Jane Stanford gave the university $11 million in stocks and bonds on May 31, 1899. The university was now on solid ground.

Restriction on the Number of Women Students

Stanford had been founded as a co-educational institution. But on the same day that she gifted the university with millions, Jane Stanford announced to the trustees that she wanted to cap the number of female students at 500. By the time of the announcement, women were 40 percent of the student body. Mrs. Stanford wanted the limit because she feared that soon women students might outnumber the men and the memories of her son and husband were still strong.

By 1903, the 500 limit had been reached. For some decades after that the restriction was fairly well implemented. However, as more decades passed, the cap was not strictly enforced.. In 1972 the university's trustees decided to go to court to end this sex discrimination by changing the university's Founding Grant to state that a limit on the number of women was prohibited. In March 1873 California's Superior Court made this change legal.

Her Death

In January 1905, Jane Stanford survived what one writer termed a murder attempt at her Nob Hill mansion in San Francisco when a poison was put in her mineral water. She and Bertha Berner, her personal secretary, took a trip to Hawaii in February. Jane Lathrop Stanford died in Honolulu on February 28 at the Moana Hotel after ingesting a bicarbonate of soda drink to help her digestion. A coroner's inquiry ruled that the bicarbonate she drank had been poisoned. No one was ever charged with a crime.

Norman Tutorow, author of the definitive biography of Leland Stanford, dismisses criminality in her death. After reading the letters Jane Stanford wrote even years before her death, he concluded that for a long time she often focused on illness, death and reuniting with her deceased son and husband. He speculated that "accidental poisoning" was a possibility,as she often drank bicarbonate of soda. (Presumably, hired help prepared all her food and drink.) He also wrote that those who believe she was murdered should not dismiss overeating, age and heart trouble as factors in her death.

Tutorow, Norman E. Tutorow. The Governor: The Life and Legacy of Leland Stanford. Vol. II. Spokane: Arthur H. Clark Company. 2004.

Wolfe, Susan. "Who Killed Jane Stanford?" Stanford Magazine. September/October 2003.

The copyright of the article Jane Stanford Ensures Survival of Stanford U. in American History is owned by Linda N. Riggins. Permission to republish Jane Stanford Ensures Survival of Stanford U. in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.