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Leland Stanford: Biography from Answers.com

  • ️Tue Mar 09 1824
Leland Stanford (1824-1893), American railroad builder and politician, was one of the founders of the Central Pacific and Southern Pacific railroads and served as California's governor and then U.S. senator.

Leland Stanford, born on March 9, 1824, in Watervliet, N.Y., was one of eight children of a prosperous farmer who also dabbled in various local bridge and road contracts. Leland received a formal education until the age of 12, had 3 years of tutoring at home, and then returned to school. He became an apprentice in an Albany law office and 3 years later gained admission to the bar.

In 1848 Stanford opened a law office at Port Washington, Wis.; meanwhile, his brothers sensed the lure of fortune in California and opened a mercantile business in Sacramento. In 1850 Stanford married Jane Elizabeth Lathrop. Two years later his law office burned down, and he decided to relocate in California. His brothers helped him establish a mining store in Cold Springs, but it did not do well so he opened a business at Michigan Bluff, which was successful. He also engaged in mining on a small scale.

In 1856 Stanford moved to Sacramento, where he started business with a brother and quickly entered politics. He met defeat in a race for Republican state treasurer in 1857, and 2 years later he lost the gubernatorial contest. His golden opportunity came in 1861, when the Civil War split the Democratic party, and he won the governor's office with less than the combined vote of his two Democratic opponents. Though he served only one term, he was able to keep California in the Union. His administration also encouraged the passage of several acts designed to aid the proposed transcontinental railroad, in which he had a large financial interest.

In 1861 Stanford, Collis P. Huntington, Charles Crocker, and Mark Hopkins organized the Central Pacific Railroad, which built east to join the westward-progressing Union Pacific Railroad. The two joined at Promontory Point, Utah, in May 1869. Stanford became president of the Central Pacific, Huntington handled eastern financial and political arrangements, Crocker supervised construction, and Hopkins looked after company finances. Stanford's excellent reputation in California allowed the Central Pacific access to considerable sums of construction money. Also, as a stockholder in the construction companies, he enjoyed great personal profit.

Stanford remained president of the Central Pacific until his death. In 1870 the Southern Pacific was incorporated to build in southern California and eventually to reach New Orleans, La. Fourteen years later a holding company, the Southern Pacific Company, merged the Southern Pacific Railroad, Central Pacific, and others into one combine. Stanford was president of the combine from 1885 to 1890.

In 1890 Stanford and Huntington split over Stanford's renewed political ambitions. After he left the governor's office in 1863, he had remained active in influencing legislation in California. In 1885 he had declared his candidacy for the U.S. Senate and had defeated A. A. Sargent on a strictly party vote. Sargent was a personal friend of Huntington, and in 1890 Huntington managed to have Stanford replaced as Southern Pacific president. Stanford's senatorial career was undistinguished.

Stanford endowed a new institution, the Leland Stanford Junior University, in 1885 in memory of his son, who had died at the age of 15. Stanford died in Palo Alto on June 21, 1893.

Further Reading

No recent work on Stanford has appeared. Two biographies are George T. Clark, Leland Stanford, War Governor of California, Railroad Builder and Founder of Stanford University (1931), and Hubert H. Bancroft, History of the Life of Leland Stanford (1952). Stanford's role in the Central Pacific is examined in Oscar Lewis, The Big Four (1938).

Additional Sources

Lewis, Oscar, The big four: the story of Huntington, Stanford, Hopkins, and Crocker, and of the building of the Central Pacific, New York: Arno Press, 1981, 1938.

Regnery, Dorothy F., The Stanford House in Sacramento: an American treasure, Stanford, Calif. (P.O. Box 2328, Stanford University, Stanford 94305): Stanford Historical Society, 1987.

Amasa Leland Stanford, known as Leland Stanford, along with partners Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins, and Collis P. Huntington (the Big Four), founded the Central Pacific and Southern Pacific Rail Roads, and laid the tracks that would eventually link a nation. In the course of building the first transcontinental railroad, Stanford dominated California business, politics, and social life for almost fifty years.

Stanford was born on March 9, 1824, in Watervliet, New York. He was one of eight children born to Josiah Stanford and Elizabeth Phillips Stanford. His father was a prominent farmer and a prosperous merchant, who supplied building materials for the town's public works projects. Growing up, Stanford worked on the family farm and helped his father with local road and bridge construction. His boyhood work on the local transportation infrastructure sparked an interest that would fuel his life's work.

Stanford's early education included attendance at the local public school and some home schooling. At eighteen, he enrolled at the Clinton Liberal Institute, in Clinton, New York. He completed his education at New York's Cazenovia Seminary. At twenty-one, he began clerking with the law firm of Wheaton, Doolittle, and Hadley, in Albany, New York. Three years later, in 1845, Stanford was admitted to the bar.

Like many young men of his era, Stanford saw tremendous opportunity for those who moved west. In 1848 he settled in Port Washington, Wisconsin, to establish a law practice. While Stanford was establishing his professional career in Wisconsin, several of his brothers headed to California, eager to apply their skills as merchants in its mining camps and growing towns.

In the spring of 1852, Stanford sent his wife, Jane Elizabeth Lathrop Stanford, to stay with her family in Albany, and he followed his brothers to the Pacific Coast. By all accounts, Stanford arrived in California with little or no money. His brothers provided him with a stock of miners' supplies and set him up as a merchant in a mining town. His business there was very successful. Popular with the miners and trained in the law, Stanford was often called upon to mediate claim disputes and other problems.

Convinced that his future was in California, Stanford persuaded his wife to join him there. In 1856 they established a home in Sacramento. Stanford continued to be involved with his brothers and their business interests, but he devoted most of his time—unsuccessfully—to politics.

He ran as a Republican candidate for state treasurer in 1857 and for governor in 1859. He was defeated in both races, but the campaigns made him a well-known political figure throughout the state. Finally, in 1861, when the outbreak of the Civil War split the state Democratic party, Stanford was successful in a bid for the governor's seat.

As the state's first Republican governor, he faced two immediate challenges: the possibility that California would split from the Union, and a serious flooding of the Sacramento River (which was so extensive that Stanford had to crawl out the window of his home and row himself to his inauguration). Stanford held California safely in the Union, and he coped with the damage caused by the flood. After providing for flood victims, and promoting minor administrative and legislative reforms, Stanford spent much of his time as governor pursuing his interest in railroads as a growing industry.

Just before the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Pacific Railroad Act, authorizing the construction of a transcontinental railroad from Omaha to Sacramento. Despite the coming war, investors and entrepreneurs across the United States looked for ways to participate in, and profit from, the new venture.

Prior to his election as governor, Stanford and three other Sacramento merchants— Crocker, Hopkins, and Huntington—had financed railroad feasibility surveys and had organized the Central Pacific Rail Road Company on June 28, 1861. Stanford was named president.

During his two-year term as governor, Stanford committed a substantial amount of public money to the construction of the Central Pacific Rail Road. Any apprehensions Stanford may have had about mingling his official actions with his private interests were overshadowed by his conviction that a rail connection with the East would benefit all citizens of California.

When his term as governor expired, Stanford left government to construct his railroad. On January 8, 1863, workers from the Central Pacific Rail Road Company began laying track at Front and K Streets in Sacramento—one year before the Union Pacific started work in the East. Six years later, on May 10, 1869, Stanford drove a gold spike in the final section of track at Promontory Point, Utah. The Central Pacific Rail Road united the West with the rest of the country, and secured Stanford's place in railroad history.

After completion of the East-West link, Stanford continued to work with his partners. The four devoted their time to strengthening and expanding their railroad properties. In 1884, they organized the Southern Pacific Company as a holding company. In 1885, the Southern Pacific Company leased the Southern Pacific Rail Road, the Central Pacific Rail Road, and other system properties, and became the dominant unit of the organization. Stanford served as president and director of the Central Pacific Rail Road Company from its inception until his death in 1893. He was director of the Southern Pacific Company from 1885 to 1893, and president from 1885 to 1890. He was director of the Southern Pacific Rail Road from 1889 to 1890.

Though no public accounting has ever been made of the profits Stanford and his partners drew from the construction of the Central Pacific and Southern Pacific Rail Roads, it is known that the enterprise made them all enormously wealthy. Stanford lived in grand style in Sacramento, and later in San Francisco. He also owned Palo Alto, a ranch in Tehama County, where he cultivated vineyards and bred racing stock. Stanford's horse-training methods were widely adopted, and his interest in how horses moved at high speeds prompted him to sponsor early experiments in motion picture photography.

Today, the Palo Alto ranch is the site of Stanford University, a memorial to Stanford's only child. Leland Stanford, Jr., died in 1884, at the age of fifteen, while touring in Italy. He had been his father's pride and joy. Stanford had placed him on an elaborate silver tray and presented him to guests at a party shortly after his birth in 1869. The tray can still be seen at the Leland Stanford House, in Sacramento.

Devastated by the death of his son and looking for a new challenge, Stanford allowed himself to be drafted by the Republican party as a candidate for the U.S. Senate. He was elected in 1885. It is generally conceded that Stanford was not suited to life as a senator. He was often absent and showed little enthusiasm for the work. His election also caused friction with his long-time business partners, who had supported another candidate. In spite of his poor performance—and poor health—he was reelected in 1891, and served until his death two years later.

The five-foot eleven-inch, 268-pound railroad giant succumbed to heart problems at his Palo Alto ranch on June 21, 1893. Upon his death, the bulk of his estate passed to his wife, who used it to support the university founded by Stanford and named for their son. Stanford is interred with his son and his wife in the family mausoleum on the Stanford University campus.


Amasa Leland Stanford
Leland Stanford
In office
January 10, 1862 – December 10, 1863
Lieutenant John F. Chellis
Preceded by John G. Downey
Succeeded by Frederick Low
In office
1885 – 1893
Preceded by James T. Farley
Succeeded by George C. Perkins
Born March 9, 1824
Watervliet, New York
Died June 21, 1893 (aged 69)
Palo Alto, California
Political party Republican
Spouse Jane Elizabeth Lathrop
Alma mater Cazenovia Seminary
Profession Entrepreneur, politician

Amasa Leland Stanford (March 9, 1824 – June 21, 1893) was an American tycoon, politician and founder of Stanford University.

Early life

He was born in Watervliet, New York, in 1824 in what is now part of the Town of Colonie, New York. He was one of eight children of Josiah and Elizabeth Phillips Stanford. His immigrant ancestor, Thomas Stanford, settled in Charlestown, Massachusetts, in the 17th century.[1] Later ancestors settled in the Mohawk Valley of New York about 1720. Stanford's father was a farmer of some means. He attended the common schools until 1840 and was tutored at home until 1839. He attended Clinton Liberal Institute, in Clinton, New York, and studied law at Cazenovia Seminary in Cazenovia, New York in 1841-45. In 1845 he entered the law office of Wheaton, Doolittle & Hadley in Albany.[1]

Stanford was admitted to the bar in 1848 and then moved to Port Washington, Wisconsin, where he began law practice with Wesley Pierce. His father presented him with a law library said to be the finest north of Milwaukee.[1] On September 30, 1850, he married Jane Elizabeth Lathrop in Albany. She was the daughter of Dyer Lathrop, a merchant of that city, and Jane Anne (Shields) Lathrop.[2] The couple were the parents of one son, Leland Stanford, Jr., born in 1868 when both were middle aged.

In 1850 year he was nominated by the Whig Party as Washington County, Wisconsin, District Attorney. He was also the founder of a newspaper in Washington County now known as the Washington Herald.

Businesses

In 1852, having lost his law library and other property by fire, he moved to California during the California Gold Rush. His wife Jane remained in Albany with her family. He went into business with his five brothers, who had preceded him to the Pacific coast. Stanford was keeper of a general store for miners at Michigan Flat in Placer County and later had a wholesale house. He served as a Justice of the Peace and helped organize the Sacramento Library Association, which later became the Sacramento Public Library. In 1855 he returned to Albany to join his wife. Stanford found the pace of Eastern life too slow, and in 1856 he and Jane moved to San Francisco and engaged in mercantile pursuits on a large scale.

As one of the Big Four railroad magnates, he cofounded on June 28, 1861, the Central Pacific Railroad, of which he was elected president. His associates were Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins and Collis P. Huntington. In 1861 he was again nominated to run for Governor of California, and this time he was elected. The railroad's first locomotive was named Gov. Stanford in his honor.[2][3]

As president of the Central Pacific, he directed its construction over the mountains, building 530 miles in 293 days. In May 1868 he joined Lloyd Tevis, Darius Ogden Mills, H.D. Bacon, Hopkins and Crocker in forming the Pacific Union Express Company, which merged in 1870 with Wells Fargo & Company.[4] As head of the railroad company which built the first transcontinental railway line over the Sierra Nevada, Stanford hammered in the famous golden spike in Promontory, Utah on May 10, 1869.

While the Central Pacific was still abuilding, Stanford and his associates acquired control of the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1868. Stanford was elected president of the Southern Pacific, a post he held (except for a brief period in 1869-70 when Tevis was acting president) until ousted by Huntington in 1890.

Stanford was a director of Wells Fargo & Company from 1870 to January 1884 and, after a brief retirement from the board, again from February 1884 until his death in June 1893.[5]

Muybridge's "The Horse in Motion"

In 1872 Stanford commissioned Eadweard Muybridge to use newly invented photographic technology to establish whether a galloping horse ever has all four feet off the ground simultaneously, which they do. This project, which illustrated motion through a series of still images viewed together, was a forerunner of motion picture technology.

Stanford moved to San Francisco in 1874, where he assumed presidency of the Occidental & Oriental Steamship Company, the steamship line to Japan and China associated with the Central Pacific.[6]

The Southern Pacific Company was organized in 1884 as a holding company for the Central Pacific-Southern Pacific system. Stanford was president of the Southern Pacific Company from 1885 until 1890, when he was forced out of that post as well as the presidency of the Southern Pacific Railroad by Huntington in revenge for Stanford's election to the United States Senate in 1885 over Huntington's friend, A.A. Sargent. 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.[7]

He also owned two wineries, the Leland Stanford Winery, founded in 1869, and run by brother Josiah, and the 55,000 acres (220 km²) Great Vina farm in Tehama County, containing what was then the largest vineyard in the world at 13,400 acres (54 km²), the Gridley tract of 22,000 acres (90 km²) in Butte County and the Palo Alto Stock Farm,[8][9] which was the home of his famous thoroughbred racers, Electioneer, Anon, Sunol, Palo Alto and Advertiser. The Palo Alto breeding farm gave Stanford University its nickname of The Farm. The Stanfords also owned a stately mansion in Sacramento, California (this was the birthplace of their only son, and now a house museum used for California state social occasions), as well as a home in San Francisco's Nob Hill district. Their Sacramento home is now the Leland Stanford Mansion State Historic Park.

Politics

Stanford, a leading member of the Republican Party, was politically active. In 1856, he met with other Whig politicians in Sacramento to organize the California Republican Party at its first state convention on April 30. He was chosen as a delegate to the Republican Party convention which selected US presidential electors in both 1856 and 1860. Stanford was defeated in his 1857 bid for California State Treasurer, and his 1859 bid for the office of Governor of California. In 1860 he was named a delegate to the Republican National Convention in Chicago but did not attend. He was finally elected governor in 1861.[2]

He was the eighth Governor of California, serving from December 1861 to December 1863, and the first Republican governor. A large, slow-speaking man who always read from a prepared text, he impressed his listeners as being more sincere than a glib, extemporaneous speaker.[10][11] During his gubernatorial tenure, he cut the state's debt in half, and advocated for the conservation of forests. He also oversaw the establishment of the California's first state normal school in San José, later to become San José State University. Following Stanford's governorship, the term of office changed from two years to four years, in line with legislation passed during his time in office.

Later, he served in the United States Senate from 1885 until his death in 1893. He served for four years as Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds, and also served on the Naval Committee. In Washington, D.C., he had a residence on Farragut Square near the home of Baron Karl von Struve, Russian minister to the United States.

Stanford University

Leland Stanford in 1890

The Memorial Church at Stanford

With wife Jane, Stanford founded Leland Stanford Junior University as a memorial for their only child, Leland Stanford, Jr., who died as a teenager of typhoid in Florence, Italy, in 1884 while on a trip to Europe. Approximately US$20 million (US$400 million in 2005 dollars) initially went into the university, which held its opening exercises October 1, 1891. Its first student, admitted to Encina Hall that day, was Herbert Hoover. The wealth of the Stanford family during the late nineteenth century is estimated at approximately US$50 million ($US1 billion in 2005 dollars).

Long suffering from locomotor ataxia, Leland Stanford died of heart failure at home in Palo Alto, California on June 21, 1893, and is buried in the Stanford family mausoleum on the Stanford campus. Jane Stanford died in 1905.[12][13] The Memorial Church at Stanford University is also dedicated to his memory.

Locomotive namesakes

Central Pacific locomotives named for Stanford[14][15] were:

Posthumous honors

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver announced on May 28, 2008, that Stanford will be inducted into the California Hall of Fame, located at The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts. The induction ceremony will take place December 15 and Stanford family descendant, Tom Stanford will accept the honor in his place.[16]

References

  1. ^ a b c Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. XVII, p. 501. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1935.
  2. ^ a b c Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. XVII, p. 502.
  3. ^ Keith Wheeler, The Railroaders, pp. 60-61. New York: Time-Life Books, 1973.
  4. ^ Noel M. Loomis, Wells Fargo, pp. 199-200. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1968.
  5. ^ Loomis, pp. 215, 255, 270.
  6. ^ The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. II, p. 129. New York: James T. White & Company, 1899. Reprint of 1891 edition.
  7. ^ Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. XVII, pp. 503, 504.
  8. ^ The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, op. cit.
  9. ^ Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. XVII, p. 504.
  10. ^ Cleveland Amory, Who Killed Society?, p. 430. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960.
  11. ^ Wheeler, p. 56.
  12. ^ National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, op. cit.
  13. ^ Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. XVII, pp. 504, 505.
  14. ^ Stephen E. Ambrose, Nothing Like It in the World. The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869, pp. 115, 117. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.
  15. ^ Brian Hollingsworth, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of North American Locomotives, pp. 40-41. New York: Crescent Books, 1984.
  16. ^ Bruce Dancis, "New California Hall of Fame class includes Fonda, Nicholson", Sacramento Bee, May 28, 2008.

External links

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

United States Senate
Preceded by
James T. Farley		 United States Senator (Class 3) from California
1885–1893
Served alongside: John F. Miller, George Hearst, Abram P. Williams, George Hearst, Charles N. Felton, Stephen M. White		 Succeeded by
George C. Perkins
Political offices
Preceded by
John G. Downey		 Governor of California
January 10, 1862–December 10, 1863		 Succeeded by
Frederick Low
Business positions
Preceded by
Timothy Guy Phelps		 Presidents of the Southern Pacific Railroad
1868–1890		 Succeeded by
Collis P. Huntington
Preceded by
None		 Executive Committee Chairmen
Southern Pacific Railroad
1890–1893		 Succeeded by
Robert S. Lovett

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