Lathrop Based Publication Since 1998
LATHROP / WESTON RANCH / FRENCH CAMP
STANFORD, FOUNDER OF LATHROP—PART TWO
By former Mayor of Lathrop, Mac Freeman---Edited by Lenora Bigelow
Leland Stanford, the founder of Lathrop and also the eighth governor of California, had a great
impact on this nation by completing the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869. Instead of taking
ten to twelve months to travel from the east coast to the west coast, it took only seven
days. He accumulated immense wealth, which enabled him to live a lavish life. Along with
millions of dollars, he had a mansion in Sacramento and San Francisco. That monumental
endeavor of building the railroad nearly destroyed his health. His doctor prescribed outdoor
activities.
In 1871, just two years after completing the Transcontinental Railroad, Stanford began
experimenting with winemaking. He later established several wineries, cultivating a total of
2,575 acres of vineyards, the largest in the world. Stanford had thought the climate in
California was perfect, but the 105-degree summer days didn’t suit any of the dozens of grape
varieties he tried. He was forced to use much of his crop for brandy. During his lifetime his
experiments never broke even.
It turned out that horses were Stanford’s passion. He bought a 22,000-acre Stock Farm,
where he trained thoroughbred racers. When Stanford University was built, it was nicknamed
“The Farm.” Stanford bet a friend $25,000 that a trotter, at one point in his gait, had all
hooves off the ground at the same time. He hired Eadward Muybridge, a landscape
photographer to prove the assertion. This inadvertently set the stage for the very first motion
picture. By a series of fast action still photographs, Stanford’s theory was proven and he won
the bet.
Eadward Muybridge was an outlandish character. He was eccentric, but at the same time
charming. With a fierce look, white hair and a beard that was tobacco-stained, hanging down
his chest, he was a strange looking man. During his seventy-four years of life he went by five
different spellings of his name and his life was filled with adventure and melodrama. In fact,
there was an incident when Muybridge came across a letter to his wife from her lover, a drama
critic, Harry Larkyns. In the envelope was a photo of Muybridge’s son, captioned, “Little
Harry.” Mr. Muybridge assuming that the boy he had raised as his own was in fact Harry
Larkyns’, son, shot and killed his wife’s lover. Muybridge was tried and found not guilty
because of justifiable homicide. San Franciscans accepted him back, apparently seeing the
shooting as frontier justice. Stanford had even helped arrange Muybridges defense.
Within a year Muybridge produced the first machine to project moving photographic images,
which he called the zoopraxiscope. It was a large glass disk about the size of a dinner plate,
with the figures running around the edge. Film historians consider the zoopraxiscope a
forerunner to the movie projector. Even in death someone misspelled his name on his
headstone. It read Eadweard Maybridge.
The only child of the Stanfords’, Leland Jr., caught typhoid two months before his sixteenth
birthday, while the family was touring Europe. He fell ill in what was then called
Constantinople. He was rushed to Florence, Italy for medical treatment, dying on March 13,
1884. After they returned to California, his parents donated approximately twenty million
dollars to building a college as a memorial. Stanford hired forty year old David Starr Jordan as
Stanford’s first president. He was president for twenty-two years. Stanford University’s
opening ceremony was October 1, 1891, and they were expecting two hundred and fifty
students, but four hundred and sixty five showed up. They were coed and provided graduate
as well as undergraduate instruction. With only fifteen teachers the first year, it was
expanded to forty-nine the second year.
Leland Stanford was elected as a United States Senator and served from 1885 to 1893. He
died while in office. Leland Stanford’s death thrust the full responsibility for the university on
Jane Stanford, and she took it on with previously unknown strength. The country was in
severe financial trouble and her husband’s estate was tied up in probate. She was advised to
close the school, even only if temporary. She decided to reduce facility salaries, cut expenses,
and newly hired teachers were cancelled. A ten thousand dollar life insurance policy helped for
a while and the probate court granted Mrs. Stanford ten thousand dollars a month allowance
from the proceeds of the estate. She reduced her personal staff from seventeen to three and
her monthly expenses to three hundred and fifty dollars, which was equivalent to a professor’s
monthly salary.
The federal government didn’t help either; they tied up Stanford’s estate indefinitely with a
claim of fifteen million dollars growing out of construction loans to the Central Pacific Railroad.
Mrs. Stanford traveled to Washington appealing to President Cleveland to speed up the courts.
In March of 1896 the Supreme Court rejected the federal government’s claims against the
Stanford estate. The estate was released from probate in 1898 and Mrs. Stanford sold her
railroad and turned eleven million dollars over to the university trustees. Stanford University
continues to grow even to this day.
By the late 1890’s the wealth of the Stanford family was estimated at fifty million dollars,
which is equivalent to one billion dollars today.
Jane Stanford’s death became one of America’s legendary mysteries. Someone got away with
murder. On the evening of January 14, 1905, at her mansion on Nob Hill in San Francisco, Mrs.
Stanford started drinking a bottle of Poland Spring mineral water (yes, they even had specially
bottled water in those days) given to her by her personal secretary, Bertha Berner. Detecting
a bitter taste, she induced herself to vomit and called Bertha and her maid. They tasted the
water and agreed that it had “a queer and bitter taste.” It was sent to a pharmacy for
analysis, and it was found to have strychnine in it.
Mrs. Stanford was still suffering from what she thought was a chest cold, and decided to sail
to Hawaii where she could recuperate in a warmer climate. On the night of February 28, 1905,
she requested a bicarbonate of soda to settle her stomach. Her secretary Bertha Berner gave
her the water. Mrs. Stanford later yelled for servants to get a physician, feeling she had lost
all sensations. The hotel physician arrived and while trying to give Mrs. Stanford medicine, she
was seized by a titanic spasm and progressed to a state of severe rigidity. Her jaws clamped
shut, her thighs opened widely, her feet twisted inwards, her hands clinched into tight fists
and her head drew back. Finally, she stopped breathing. These are classic symptoms of
poisoning, according to experts.
Mrs. Stanford had been having second thoughts about retaining Mr. Jordan as president of the
University, as they were having many disagreements.
Four of the most distinguished doctors in Hawaii came to the conclusion that she died as a
result of being poisoned. That’s also what a coroner’s inquest and the Hawaiian Sheriff
concluded. The University’s president, David Starr Jordan, came to Hawaii after Jane
Stanford’s death and hired a young physician to go over the autopsy report and he came to
the conclusion that Mrs. Stanford died of a heart attack. The four physicians who came to the
conclusion that Jane Stanford was poisoned were far more experienced in their medical
careers. The physician Jordan hired was out of medical practice a decade later and died
destitute in 1947 leaving only one hundred and twenty five dollars of stock certificates.
The Hawaiian Sheriff called Jordan a science crank. He also said he thought Jordan was trying
to cover up a murder. No evidence was ever found placing either Jordan or Bertha Berner to
the murder. The Hawaiian newspapers reported that Mrs. Stanford’s death was a homicide,
and the stateside press mostly reported Jordan’s heart attack theory. No one was ever
charged. This ends the ironic saga of the Stanfords.
Copyright © 2007 Lathrop Rush -
last updated: June 4, 2008
Archive Articles....
