Jane Elizabeth Lathrop Stanford was an American philanthropist and co-founder of Stanford University in 1885, along with her husband, Leland Stanford, in memory of their only child, Leland Stanford Jr.
21 Facts About Jane Stanford
2.
Jane Stanford was the eighth First Lady of California during her husband's term of office as governor from January 10,1862 to December 10,1863.
3.
Jane Stanford attended The Albany Academy for Girls, the longest-running girls' day school in the country.
4.
Jane Stanford was the second or third of six or seven siblings:.
5.
Leland Stanford went to California to join his brothers in mercantile businesses related to the California Gold Rush, and Jane remained in Albany with her family.
6.
Jane Stanford returned in 1855, and the following year, they moved to San Francisco, where he engaged in mercantile pursuits on a large scale.
7.
Leland Jane Stanford was a co-founder of the Central Pacific Railroad and served as its president from 1861 until his death in 1893.
8.
Leland Jane Stanford was president of the Southern Pacific Railroad, served as governor of California from 1862 to 1863, and was a United States senator from California from 1885 until his death in 1893.
9.
On May 14,1868, Jane Stanford gave birth to a son, Leland Stanford, Jr.
10.
Jane Stanford died at age 15 on March 13,1884, of typhoid fever while the family was in Florence, Italy.
11.
Jane Stanford advocated for the admission of women; the university had been co-educational since its founding.
12.
Jane Stanford took a strong position on the issue of academic freedom when she sought and ultimately succeeded in having Stanford University economist Edward A Ross fired.
13.
Jane Stanford traveled to London in 1897, the year of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, in hopes of selling her rubies and other jewels to raise funds for the university.
14.
Items purchased through the Jewel Fund display a distinctive bookplate that depicts a romanticized Jane Stanford offering her jewels to Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom.
15.
On January 14,1905, at her Nob Hill mansion in San Francisco, Jane Stanford consumed mineral water that tasted bitter.
16.
Jane Stanford quickly forced herself to vomit the water with prompting from and assistance by her maid, and when both the maid and her secretary agreed that the bottled water tasted strange, she sent it to a pharmacy to be analyzed.
17.
Jane Stanford moved out of her mansion and vowed never to return.
18.
Depressed by the conviction that an unknown party had tried to kill her and suffering from a cold, Jane Stanford soon decided to sail to Hawaii, with plans to continue on to Japan.
19.
The Jane Stanford party left San Francisco for Honolulu on February 15,1905.
20.
Robert Cutler, a retired Stanford neurologist, recounted in The Mysterious Death of Jane Stanford what took place upon the arrival of Francis Howard Humphris, the hotel physician:.
21.
Jane Stanford then reported to the press that Stanford had in fact died of heart failure, a "medically preposterous" diagnosis given the dramatic and highly distinctive symptoms of strychnine poisoning that she had displayed.