Most San Franciscans know the story of Leland Stanford. He opened up a mercantile store in Sacramento with his brothers during the Gold Rush, once getting paid with startup gold mine shares that ended up producing. A decade later, he invested that gold with three other partners and financed the transcontinental railroad. By the time it was completed, Stanford was one of the richest men in San Francisco. He went on to establish a rail network that extended throughout California. He spent a year as Governor during the Civil War, and later became a US Senator.
What is not so readily known is the biography of Leland’s wife Jane. She was born in 1828 and raised in Albany, New York, where she met and married attorney Leland Stanford in 1850. They moved to Wisconsin for two years, but when Leland’s law office burned down, Jane returned to Albany and Leland moved to join his brothers in Sacramento. Leland moved Jane out to San Francisco in 1856, and after making his fortune, they built a 50-room Italianate mansion at the top of Nob Hill with a dining room that could seat 100 and a two story rotunda in the entry. The mansion burned down during the 1906 earthquake[2] and today is the site of The Stanford Court Hotel.
In 1868, eighteen years into their marriage, Jane gave birth to their only child, Leland Stanford, Jr. Leland Jr. died tragically in 1884 at the age of 15 of typhoid as the family was doing a grand tour of Europe. Both parents were devastated, especially Jane, who would wear black for the rest of her life. In their son’s memory, Leland and Jane established Stanford University on the South Bay peninsula, putting the majority of their fortune into its creation. Stanford University opened in 1891. While Leland was involved in the design of the campus and the hiring of President David Starr Jordan, he became Governor soon after the university opened and left its funding and operation to Jane. She presided over an all-men Board of Trustees and was instrumental in focusing the university’s interest in the arts. She also insisted on admitting women. Leland died two years after the university opened, and Jane single-handedly ran university operations until her death.
In February of 1905, Jane suddenly disappeared. It was learned that she had boarded a ship for Hawaii. Two months later, San Francisco papers reported that she was dead. On March 21st, her body arrived in San Francisco. All flags were lowered to half mast, and thousands lined the streets to pay their respects. Her body was buried next to her husband and son in the family mausoleum that remains today on the Stanford campus.
In the years that followed, Jane was painted as a pampered and demanding woman who had no formal education, never recovered from the death of her son, and sought the company of mediums to communicate with the dead. But in 1980, Stanford University students began researching the circumstances of Jane’s death. In 1905 the university was struggling financially, and she and President Jordan were not getting along. While Jane wanted to use the limited funds to complete construction of the campus, Jordan wanted to increase faculty salaries. In January of 1905, Jane met with the Board of Trustees at her San Francisco mansion and suggested that Jordan be fired. The next evening, she drank mineral water that she thought tasted off. She forced herself to vomit, then took the mineral water to a pharmacist to be examined. The pharmacist found a lethal dose of strychnine in the bottle. Terrified, Jane moved out of the mansion and fired a maid who had worked with her for almost 30 years. She hired Harry Morse Detective and Patrol Agency to investigate the incident. They looked into the fired maid, but could find no evidence against her. Jane hid out in various hotels until finally boarding a ship destined for Oahu, with the intention of eventually traveling on to Japan. She stayed at the Mauna Hotel. On February 28th, she asked her personal secretary, who had been in the house at the time of the original poisoning, to make her a bicarbonate of soda. Later that night Jane called out for a physician, believing that she had been poisoned again. She died hours later. Her last words were “This is a terrible way to die!”. After an investigation and autopsy, the coroner’s jury ruled that Jane had been murdered by strychnine poisoning. But meanwhile, David Jordan traveled to Hawaii and hired a local doctor, paying him to submit an alternate report that stated that Jane died from heart disease. Jordan came back to California and created a media blitz declaring that Jane had suffered from an ongoing heart condition which was exacerbated by travel and exhaustion. He would remain University president until 1913.
