51 Facts About Leland Stanford

Amasa Leland Stanford was an American attorney, industrialist, philanthropist, and Republican Party politician from Watervliet, New York.

Leland Stanford served as the eighth governor of California from 1862 to 1863 and represented the state in the United States Senate from 1885 until his death in 1893.

Leland Stanford was an influential executive of the Central Pacific Railroad and later of the Southern Pacific railroads from 1861 to 1890; these positions gave him tremendous power in the Western United States which left a lasting impact on California.

Leland Stanford played a significant role as a shareholder and executive in the early history of Pacific Life and Wells Fargo.

Leland Stanford was born in 1824 in what was then Watervliet, New York.

Leland Stanford was one of eight children of Josiah and Elizabeth Phillips Stanford.

Leland Stanford was raised on family farms in the Lisha Kill and Roessleville areas of Watervliet.

Leland Stanford attended the common school until 1836 and was tutored at home until 1839.

Leland Stanford attended Clinton Liberal Institute, in Clinton, New York, and studied law at Cazenovia Seminary in Cazenovia, New York, in 1841 to 1845.

Leland Stanford's father presented him with a law library said to be the finest north of Milwaukee.

In 1850, Leland Stanford was nominated by the Whig Party as Washington County, Wisconsin district attorney.

In 1852, having lost his law library and other property to a fire, Leland Stanford followed his five brothers to California during the California Gold Rush.

Leland Stanford went into business with his brothers and became the keeper of a general store for miners in Michigan City, California, later the name changed to Michigan Bluff in Placer County; later he had a wholesale house.

Leland Stanford served as a justice of the peace and helped organize the Sacramento Library Association, which later became the Sacramento Public Library.

Leland Stanford was one of the four merchants known popularly as "The Big Four", who were the key investors in Chief Engineer Theodore Dehone Judah's plan for the Central Pacific Railroad.

The five of them incorporated it on June 28,1861, and Leland Stanford was elected as its president.

Leland Stanford was nominated again in 1861 and won the election.

Leland Stanford served one term, then limited to two years.

Leland Stanford was elected president of the Southern Pacific, a post he held until 1890 when he was ousted by Collis Huntington.

Leland Stanford was even given the honor of driving the final spike.

Leland Stanford moved with his family from Sacramento to San Francisco in 1874, where he assumed presidency of the Occidental and Oriental Steamship Company, the steamship line to Japan and China associated with the Central Pacific.

Leland Stanford was president of the Southern Pacific Company from 1885 until 1890 when he was forced out of that post by Collis Huntington, the company's ranking vice president and the corporate directorate.

Leland Stanford was elected chairman of the Southern Pacific Railroad's executive committee in 1890, and he held this post and the presidency of the Central Pacific Railroad until his death.

Leland Stanford was a director of Wells Fargo and Company from 1870 to January 1884.

Leland Stanford owned two wineries, the Leland Stanford Winery in Alameda County founded in 1869, and run and later inherited by his brother Josiah, and the 55,000 acres Great Vina Ranch in Tehama County, containing what was then the largest vineyard in the world at 3,575 acres and given to Stanford University.

Leland Stanford was interested in horses and owned the Gridley tract of 17,800 acres in Butte County.

Leland Stanford bred Standardbred horses to be raced as trotters, including his chief sire, Electioneer and his winning offspring: Arion, Sunol, Palo Alto, and Chimes ; and Thoroughbreds for flat racing.

In 1872, Leland Stanford commissioned the photographer Eadweard Muybridge to undertake scientific studies of the gaits of horses at a trot and gallop at the Agricultural Park race track in Sacramento.

Leland Stanford wanted to determine if the horses ever had all four feet off the ground at the same time.

Leland Stanford was politically active and became a leading member of the Republican Party.

Leland Stanford was chosen as a delegate to the Republican Party convention that selected US presidential electors in both 1856 and 1860.

Leland Stanford was defeated in his 1857 bid for California state treasurer, and his 1859 bid for the office of governor of California.

Leland Stanford was elected governor in a second campaign in 1861.

Leland Stanford was elected the eighth Governor of California, serving from January 1862 to December 1863, and the first Republican governor.

Leland Stanford oversaw the establishment of California's first state normal school in San Jose, later to become San Jose State University.

Leland Stanford did sign into law an act reversing part of the 1850 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians that allowed the enslavement of Native Americans.

Leland Stanford was initially acclaimed for such statements, but lost support when it was revealed that his Central Pacific Railroad was importing Chinese workers to construct the railroad.

Leland Stanford served for four years as chairman of the US Senate Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds and on the Naval Committee.

Leland Stanford was president and director of the Central Pacific Railroad the entire time he sat in the Senate.

Leland Stanford authored several Senate bills that advanced ideas advocated by the People's Party: a bill to foster the creation of worker-owned cooperatives, and a bill to allow the issuance of currency backed by land value instead of only the gold standard.

Leland Stanford had ideas of Leland Stanford University employee ownership for more than thirty years before giving them expression in his plans for the university, proposals as a senator, and in interviews with the news media.

On September 30,1850, Leland Stanford married Jane Elizabeth Lathrop in Albany, New York.

Leland Stanford was the daughter of Dyer Lathrop, a merchant of that city, and Jane Anne Lathrop.

The couple did not have any children for years, until their only child, a son, Leland DeWitt Stanford, was born in 1868 when his father was forty-four.

Leland Stanford was an active Freemason from 1850 to 1855, joining the Prometheus Lodge No 17 in Port Washington, Wisconsin.

Leland Stanford was a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows in California.

Long-suffering from locomotor ataxia, Leland Stanford died of heart failure at home in Palo Alto, California, on June 21,1893.

Leland Stanford was buried in the family mausoleum on the Stanford campus.

Jane Leland Stanford died in 1905 after being poisoned with strychnine.

In 2008, Leland Stanford was inducted into The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts, California Hall of Fame.

Mount Leland Stanford, located in California's Sierra Nevada, is named in his honor.