Famous Givers and Their Gifts

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

"The biographer of Leland Stanford will have to tell the fascinating story of a career almost matchless in the splendor of its incidents. It was partly due to the circumstances of his time, but chiefly due to the largeness and boldness of his nature, that this plain, simple man succeeded in cutting so broad a swath. He lived at the top of his possibilities." Thus wrote Dr. Albert Shaw in the Review of Reviews, August, 1893.

Leland Stanford, farmer-boy, lawyer, railroad builder, governor, United States Senator, and munificent giver, was born at Watervliet, N.Y., eight miles from Albany, March 9, 1824. He was the fourth son in a family of seven sons and one daughter, the latter dying in infancy.

His father, Josiah Stanford, was a native of Massachusetts, but moved with his parents to the State of New York when he was a boy. He became a successful farmer, calling his farm by the attractive name of Elm Grove. He had the energy and industry which it seems Leland inherited. He built roads and bridges in the neighborhood, and was an earnest advocate of DeWitt Clinton's scheme of the Erie Canal, connecting the great lakes with New York City by way of the Hudson River.

"Gouverneur Morris had first suggested the Erie Canal in 1777," says T. W. Higginson, "and Washington had indeed proposed a system of such waterways in 1774. But the first actual work of this kind in the United States was that dug around Turner's Falls in Massachusetts soon after 1792. In 1803 DeWitt Clinton again proposed the Erie Canal. It was begun in 1817, and opened July 4, 1825, being cut mainly through a wilderness. The effect produced on public opinion was absolutely startling. When men found that the time from Albany to Buffalo was reduced one-half, and that the freight on a ton of merchandise was cut down from $100 to $10, and ultimately to $3, similar enterprises sprang into being everywhere."

LELAND STANFORD.

People were not excited over canals only; everybody was interested about the coming railroads. George Stephenson, in the midst of the greatest opposition, landowners even driving the surveyors off their grounds, had built a road from Liverpool to Manchester, England, which was opened Sept. 15, 1830. The previous month, August, the Mohawk and Hudson River Railroad from Albany to Schenectady, sixteen miles, was commenced, a charter having been granted sometime before this. Josiah Stanford was greatly interested in this enterprise, and took large contracts for grading. Men at the Stanford home talked of the great future of railroads in America, and even prophesied a road to Oregon. "Young as he was when the question of a railroad to Oregon was first agitated," says a writer, "Leland Stanford took a lively interest in the measure. Among its chief advocates at that early day was Mr. Whitney, one of the engineers in the construction of the Mohawk and Hudson River Railway. On one occasion, when Whitney passed the night at Elm Grove, Leland being then thirteen years of age, the conversation ran largely on this overland railway project; and the effect upon the mind of such a boy may be readily imagined. The remembrance of that night's discussion between Whitney and his father never left him, but bore the grandest fruits."

The cheerful, big-hearted boy worked on his father's farm with his brothers, rising at five o'clock, even on cold winter mornings, that he might get his work done before school hours. He himself tells how he earned his first dollar. "I was about six years old," he said. "Two of my brothers and I gathered a lot of horseradish from the garden, washed it clean, took it to Schenectady, and sold it. I got two of the six shillings received. I was very proud of my money. My next financial venture was two years later. Our hired man came from Albany, and told us chestnuts were high. The boys had a lot of them on hand which we had gathered in the fall. We hurried off to market with them, and sold them for twenty-five dollars. That was a good deal of money when grown men were getting only two shillings a day."

Perhaps the boy felt that he should not always like to work on the farm, for he had made up his mind to get an education if possible. When he was eighteen his father bought a piece of woodland, and told him if he would cut off the timber he might have the money received for it. He immediately hired several persons to help him, and together they cut and piled 2,600 cords of wood, which Leland sold to the Mohawk and Hudson River Railroad at a profit of $2,600.