Leland Stanford Junior
Leland Stanford junior (birth name Leland DeWitt Stanford ; born May 14, 1868 in Sacramento , California , United States , † March 13, 1884 in Florence , Italy ) was the only child of the California governor and railroad entrepreneur Leland Stanford and his wife Jane . After his untimely death, he became the namesake for Stanford University .
Life
Childhood years
Leland Stanford Jr. grew up in a sheltered environment under the care of numerous servants. His mother was 39 when he was born after their marriage had been childless for 18 years. The boy was tutored by private tutors, had his own pony and a small train that ran on a track from the family farm in Palo Alto to the stables. At the age of five, he and his parents moved to San Francisco near the new headquarters of the Central Pacific Railroad , which his father served as president. Even as a toddler, he and his family took day-long train journeys through the USA and later across Europe. In the family-owned mansion in the Nob Hill neighborhood of San Francisco, some curiosities that he had collected on his travels were on display on the third floor. As he explained to Luigi Palma di Cesnola , the first director of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art , he hoped to later establish a public archaeological museum in San Francisco. As a teenager he was associated with senators, generals and chief judges. In addition to his sporting activities, shooting, fishing and hunting, Leland was a diligent student with an interest in French, German and history. For his son's practical training, his father signed him up for an accounting course at the newly established private school Heald College in San Francisco.
Travel and death
At the age of one, Leland made his first train trip with his mother to New York , where relatives were visited. His first Grand Tour to Europe took place in 1880/1881 with his mother and teacher Herbert Nash. As can be seen from the 13-year-old's diary entries between April and August 1881, the days were filled with lessons in the morning, sightseeing in the afternoon, dance and swimming lessons, occasional walks in the Jardin des Tuileries and a few dinners or visits to the opera. In Italy, the boy was particularly impressed by an excursion to Mount Vesuvius , a military parade in honor of King Umberto I and an audience with Pope Leo XIII.
The second trip to Europe, this time with both parents and Herbert Nash again, began in 1883 and was characterized by the parents' health problems, which Governor Stanford tried to alleviate in Bavarian thermal springs on the advice of London doctors. A letter of recommendation from the museum director Cesnola gave Leland junior numerous afternoons in the Egyptian department of the Louvre , where he learned to decipher hieroglyphics with the help of the Egyptologist Georges Daressy . The Stanfords spent Christmas 1883 in Vienna and traveled on to Constantinople , where Sultan Abdülhamid II wanted to consult with Governor Stanford about railway construction in the Ottoman Empire . In a letter to a friend Leland junior describes: "Not two Turks seem to be dressed alike because their clothes are so differently colored ... We saw heaps of diamonds and an emerald the size of your hand." In January 1884 the family came to Athens at. Despite the extreme cold, Leland insisted on visiting the Acropolis and meeting the famous archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann , who had just been excavating in Troy . From Greece, the family boarded a ship to Italy. Leland had now contracted typhoid , an incurable febrile illness at the time, the effects of which were made worse by doctors in Rome with ice packs.
Two months before his 16th birthday, Leland Stanford Jr. died on March 13, 1884 in Florence. He was buried in his family's mausoleum on the grounds of their Stanford farm . A year later, his parents set up a fund to establish and endow a university, which opened in 1891 and named after their deceased son.
Web links
- Theresa Johnston: About a Boy Stanford, July – August 2003
- Stanford Magazine Illustrated reprint of 2003 article
- Stanford History
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Stanford, Leland Jr. |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Stanford, Leland DeWitt (maiden name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Namesake of Stanford University |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 14, 1868 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Sacramento , California , United States |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 13, 1884 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | Florence , Italy |