Jane Stanford

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Jane Stanford (August 25, 1828–February 28, 1905), was the daughter of a shopkeeper and lived on Washington Avenue in Albany New York, she met a young man, delivering firewood from his father's woodlot, and later after he was admitted to the Bar in 1848, Jane wed Leland Stanford and they headed west, first to Wisconsin, then to California. She would eventually co-found Stanford University with her husband.

Born Jane Eliza Lothropp in Albany, New York, she married Leland Stanford on Sept. 30, 1850. One of her direct ancestors was John Lothropp, who is also an ancestor to severval American presidents, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, George H.W Bush and George W. Bush.

Upon the death of their only son Leland Stanford, Jr. on a trip in Italy, the elder Leland turned to his wife, Jane, and said, famously, "The children of California shall be our children." They then founded Leland Stanford Junior University in their son's honor. After Leland's death, Jane took control of the University, and it was at Jane Stanford's direction that Stanford University gained an early focus on the arts, and it was she who advocated the admission of women.

Jane Stanford also figured prominently, but negatively, in the issue of academic freedom when she sought, and ultimately succeeded, in having Stanford University economist Edward A. Ross fired for making speeches favoring Democrat William Jennings Bryan and for his liberal economic teachings. This resulted in the American Association of University Professors' "Report on Academic Freedom and Tenure" (1915, by Arthur Oncken Lovejoy and Edwin R. A. Seligman,) and in the writing of the AAUP 1915 Declaration of Principles.

She made her famous, "jewel journey" to London, England during 1897, the year of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee to dispose of her collection of jewels to raise funds for her University, but her trip was a failure, she did not sell her storied ruby collection. But it is described by historian Oscar Lewis that the Queen, from her carriage, nodded to Jane Stanford, watching the parade from a rented window on Fleet Street.

Late in life, Jane Stanford attempted to reconcile her differences with Collis P. Huntington at his offices in New York.

In 1905, Jane Stanford was at the center of one of America's legendary mysteries. She allegedly died of strychnine poisoning while on the island of Oahu, Hawaii in a Moana Hotel room.

An account of events says that on the evening of February 28 at the hotel, Stanford had asked for bicarbonate of soda to settle her stomach. Her personal secretary Bertha Berner prepared the solution, which Stanford drank. At 11:15 p.m., Stanford cried out for her servants and Moana Hotel staff to fetch a physician feeling that she had lost sensations. Robert W. P. Cutler, who wrote the book, The Mysterious Death of Jane Stanford, recounted what took place upon the arrival of Moana Hotel physician, Dr. Francis Howard Humphris:

As Humphris tried to administer a solution of bromine and chloral hydrate, Mrs. Stanford, now in anguish, exclaimed, "My jaws are stiff. This is a horrible death to die." Whereupon she was seized by a tetanic spasm that progressed relentlessly to a state of severe rigidity: her jaws clamped shut, her thighs opened widely, her feet twisted inwards, her fingers and thumbs clenched into tight fists, and her head drew back. Finally, her respiration ceased. Stanford was dead from strychnine poisoning.[1] Who killed her, remains a mystery. Today, the room no longer exists; it was stripped for expansion of the lobby.

She is buried alongside husband Leland and their son at the Stanford family mausoleum on the Stanford campus.

[edit] sources

Dickson, Samuel Tales of San Francisco 1947, Stanford University Press LC # 57-9306

[edit] External links

• Jane Stanford--Jane Stanford's 1898 Time Capsule
• Stanford Magazine--"Who Killed Jane Stanford?"
• "President Bollinger Delivers Cardozo Lecture on Academic Freedom - 2005, Columbia U.
• "The roots/routes of academic freedom and the role of the intellectual" --William G. Tierney, American Association of University Professors
• "American Association of University Professors' 1915 Declaration of Principles"