Chapter 1: What is the background of Jane Stanford and her role in founding Stanford University?
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Listen to Adventures of Curiosity Cove every Monday from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is stuff you should know. True crime murder mystery edition, like in the purest form in that we do not know who did it. Sorry. Who done it? Yeah. And we may never know. We probably will never know. Even though we kind of know, it seems like. Yeah, I don't think we'll ever know.
This was a listener suggestion. Okay. And actually from a year ago, almost to the day. Oh, that's creepy. Sometimes we like to do that, you know. Sure. It's like, yeah, great idea. We'll do it in one year. Yeah, we're like, great idea. So this has been sitting in the kitty for a while. This is from Samuel Kroll. And Olivia helped us out.
And it's a real banger about the history of, in a way, the history of Stanford University. It really is. And one of its co-founders and her pretty obvious murder. Yeah. And the Stanfords were very much intertwined with the early years of Stanford University. Because after all, you can't spell Stanford without Stanford.
And the reason that this is a murder mystery is because one of the Stanfords dies mysteriously. We're not going to say who. You'll figure it out toward the end.
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Chapter 2: What mysterious circumstances surrounded Jane Stanford's death?
I say we jump in and just start talking about Jane Stanford, who is, for the most part, the star of our show. That's right. Because she was murdered. Man, that was the big twist. Did you not hear me? Or is this all a bit? It's a bit. Okay. I didn't hear you, but it is still a bit. What did you say that was so pivotal? I said that she was murdered.
And then he said, we're not going to say he was murdered right afterward. Oh, I didn't hear you say that. I see. Yeah. Well, we'll just edit all this out. No, we should leave it. So Jane Stanford was, you know, she was sort of the prototypical Gilded Age wife at the time, supporting her husband. That was kind of a job. Not kind of.
It was like a real job, sort of entertaining, keeping up with, like, large residences when you have tons of money, that kind of thing. Mm-hmm. But she would go on to be a, she was a very demanding person, it seems like, and would go on to be a very demanding kind of lead trustee at Stanford University, and some might even say a micromanager. Oh, yeah.
I think she definitely fits that mold for sure. But as a micromanager, she would just say, I just want to make sure it's done right. Right, right. She had some very distinct ideas that she wanted fulfilled with Stanford, and she had the money to back it up, basically.
Right.
Yeah, for sure. But she was born a little background here in upstate New York in Albany. In 1828, one of seven kids, she was born wealthy. Her parents were shopkeepers. And she would eventually marry a guy named Leland Stanford. She was born Jane Lathrop and then would be Jane Stanford or Jane Lathrop Stanford. He was also from upstate New York. And he was an attorney practicing in Wisconsin.
I keep wanting to say Winsconsin. You can say that. It's all right. People in Wisconsin don't care. Well, we're going to Madison in April. I can't say that in front of them. I think you can. I really think they'll support it.
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Chapter 3: How did Jane Stanford's personal life influence her actions and decisions?
They are nice people. Yes, pretty much to a person, except for that one. They knew who they are. Jane was 22 at the time, and they were apart for the beginning of their marriage, though, right? Geographically. Yeah, Jane moved back to Albany after they got married and they were living in Wisconsin. She wanted to care for her father, which put that just off to the side.
It's not a huge thing, but she cared for her father until his death. After he died, she joined her husband Leland out west. He was a gold prospector. Well, actually, I don't think he ever got into prospecting. He was a goods, dried goods shop owner who outfitted prospectors. And he fulfilled like the quintessential golden rule of business in a gold brush. Don't prospect, sell shovels.
That's exactly what he did. Yeah. Yeah, because you know what? You may not find gold, but you can always sell a shovel to a gold miner. That's precisely right. I speculate when you can, I don't know, regulate gold. Oh, I was about to say, man, if you don't rhyme that thing, I don't even know who you are. I still didn't do a very good job, but at least it rhymed. I thought it was pretty good.
So he made some pretty good money doing that, but he really, really got rich when he became one of the big four robber barons that put their money forth to finance the Central Pacific Railroad in 1861. Right. And all of a sudden, they had this big life as wealthy people. And he said, well, why not just get into politics as well?
Well, the big four basically got him into politics to represent their interests, basically. Like, they put up some of their money, but for the most part, they used Leland Stanford's run as the governor of California and then later on as a senator in the United States Senate.
To basically lean on the government to get the government to underwrite the building of the railroad, to make connections so that you could bribe people more easily. Like, it was a swindle. That's how those dudes made that railroad. They ended up with the monopoly. They secretly bought the Southern Pacific Railroad, and all of a sudden, Leland Stanford's the president of that now, too.
So, just... to just kind of like just paint it with a big brush, the Stanfords made their money in very questionable ways. So just remember that because this is like such a, it's such a great example of American myth-making where some guy just basically fails upward and becomes super, super wealthy.
And then, you know, very shortly after that, he becomes lionized as like this great heroic builder of America. And that's just, I'm just so sick of that. It still goes on today. I mean, haven't most of the robber barons been kind of kneecapped? Yeah, I think so. But I think at least some of them were legitimately philanthropists. I don't think Leland Stanford was legitimately a philanthropist.
I get the impression, or I've actually seen it written, that basically they laundered their ill-gotten gains through the university to leave a prestigious legacy for themselves instead.
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Chapter 4: What were the events leading up to the poisoning attempts on Jane Stanford?
All right. Well, they were smart for the first 18 years of their marriage and did not have kids. And then they ruined that all kind of later in life for them. When little Leland Jr. was born, Jane was 39 at the time, which is... especially for the time, a bit of an advanced age to give birth. Certainly, you know, not without risk. And Leland Sr. was, like you said, he got involved in politics.
They also, I mean, they had their fingers in a lot of pies. They ran a few wineries. They raised horses. This is just a little kind of fun side note that Livia dug up. But, you know, the very famous... Edward Muybridge, his early motion picture film when he set up 24 cameras and showed like a horse running, which A said like, hey, we can have something called motion pictures.
And also said, hey, look, that horse has all of its four feet off the ground at the same time. That was done on their property, the Palo Alto Stock Farm. So just a fun little thing. And that's where Stanford University eventually would be. Did you ever see the Jordan Peele movie Nope? Yep.
I thought that was a cool little, just a little lanyap where the, oh, I don't remember his name, but he was also in Get Out, too. The main guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's great. Where he, his character is descended from the jockey that rode that horse. Yeah, I thought that was cool, too. Daniel something, right? Yeah. I don't remember. I feel like a total jerk.
Well, you know, you can't remember everything off the dome. But it turns out in real life that Jockey's name was Dom, D-O-M-M. They think maybe Gilbert Dom. So you know his name. Yeah, but I looked it up this morning. So, all right, that's it, smart guy. I'm glad everybody knows that guy's name. Here we go. So sadly, Leland Jr. would not live very long. He died at 15.
He went to Europe with his mom. And it was a pretty sad thing, obviously a tragedy for the family. But a very interesting thing happened at the funeral when a young woman named Bertha Berner was there
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Chapter 5: What was the aftermath of Jane Stanford's death and the investigation that followed?
and met Jane, would later write her a letter and say, hey, I think you could use a person like me in your life. We'll call it personal secretary or whatever, but basically your right-hand person to kind of help you with everything that you need. Yeah. Like you said, just the classic Gilded Age wife, right? Yeah. Okay. Along with a little spiritualism thrown in. Yeah, that was a big one.
And, you know, that gets kind of tossed around quite a bit, that the Stanfords in particular, Jane, were really heavy into spiritualism. Well, a lot of people were heavy into spiritualism at this time. So it was generally looked down upon from the halls of academia. So in a way, it was a little awkward for the university, for their founders to have been into spiritualism.
But it wasn't just completely out of left field.
Yeah.
No, not, you know, among, especially among sort of wealthy elites. They were into that kind of thing. And also, I mean, there was a, the death of Edward, or the death of Leland Jr. was a really huge turning point. Apparently, they were kind of dabbling in it. But after that, she kind of devoted herself to getting a message from, or getting in contact, I guess, with Leland Jr. again. Yeah.
And she tried for a long time. And then I think in the end, she was dissatisfied. She couldn't find anybody that she considered legitimate enough to actually do it. Even though she believed it was possible, she found that everyone she came in contact with was a fraud or huckster. So and she's probably right. So Berner gets this job.
You know, people from the outside were like, man, she really works hard for for Jane Stanford. Like she doesn't seem to have any time off. She kind of is run by Jane Stanford. But they were very close and she would be with her until the day she died. Put a pin in that. And in fact, would get quite rich eventually. from her death. I think she got 15 grand.
The other household staff got $1,000 each in the will, but Berner got 15 grand, which is about half a million today, so not too bad. No, not bad at all. Also, I just want to say before we move on, the actor's name is Daniel Kaluuya. Great. So it was Leland Jr. 's death that actually inspired the founding of Stanford University. There are a couple of stories about how that might have happened.
I think Leland took maybe the more acceptable mainstream version, which is, hey, it came to me in a dream after my son's death. But there was a medium, Maude Lord-Drake, who said, no, that actually happened in a seance with me.
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Chapter 6: How did Leland Stanford's legacy impact the university after Jane's death?
It was a visitation from the afterworld that I mediated. And he just doesn't want to say that out loud. So he just called it a dream. Yeah. Her famous quote was, who has two thumbs and was the medium who got Leland Jr. to tell his parents that he wanted them to found a university? And she said, me. Yeah. Maude Lord-Drake.
So, yeah, you could actually make a case that if the university was true to form at the time, it's quite possible that Stanford's claim that it was from this seance, but the university just basically whitewashed that over and it became a dream instead. That's right.
So, Chuck, regardless of how it came about, the Stanfords said that although they had lost their son, now the children of California would become their children. And to do that, they founded Stanford University. For those of you who aren't familiar, it's one of the most prestigious universities in the world, as far as I know, certainly in the U.S.,
It was the cradle for our current tech explosion. And it's just a really great university. Its official name is Leland Stanford Junior University, after Leland Stanford Junior. Still today, that's what it's called. And if you look at the details of how it was founded and what its mission was when it was opened, it's like the Stanford's definitely did a good job of opening a public university.
Yeah, it was pretty unique. Tuition was free, first of all. So that was fairly unique. So, you know, they let in students that couldn't afford to go to college otherwise. Yeah. Jane said, I want to make it a co-ed school. There were just a handful of those in the in the United States at the time. And also I'm doing Sergio. You're what? I'm doing Sergio, Jane said. Oh, I got you.
The other sort of odd thing was that it was not associated with a church. It was a Christian university, but it wasn't like, you know, Jane, again, was was dabbling in the occult. So she she had sort of loose sort of a loose association with particular denominations. So it was a non-denominational Christian school, very much kind of a liberal arts thing at first. It would later.
And in fact, you know, it was part of the friction between Jane and the eventual president on what kind of school it would be. She wanted it more liberal arts and he wanted it more science and research research based. Yeah, but even out of the gate, apparently it was for preparing students for personal success and direct usefulness in life.
One of the things they did was they created an extension service for local farmers to find out the latest agricultural techniques. They accepted high school shop classes as credits. It wasn't an elite institution meant to create a new generation of elites like, say, Harvard was at the time. Just at the time.
By the way, in my defense, I didn't recognize your Jane's Addiction line because I think that lyric is wrong. I think it's, I'm done with Sergio. Oh, I think that's the second verse.
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Chapter 7: What theories exist regarding the true cause of Jane Stanford's death?
Is it? I will say anything to make myself right. Okay. I just, when he said doing Sergio, I was like, who the hell is Sergio? But she was doing Sergio. That's the point. Okay. He treated her like a rag doll. Well, see, now you're getting back on the good side of history. Well done. Thanks. All right, so Stanford is opening up. It's October 1st, 1891.
Leland gives a great speech, Leland Sr., of course. And Jane apparently had a real banger of a speech written, and she said that she didn't have the courage to actually do it. But had she, it would have gone over pretty well, I think, because in it, there was a plea to the students like, hey, we're a new school, you know, got to work out the kinks here, maybe be a little patient.
And hey, if you're a young male student here, you know, you have girls around, please treat these young ladies with great deference. And you might have some kids who don't come from wealthy backgrounds because it's a free school and maybe treat them well as well. So, you know, she has this great letter written and never says it publicly, unfortunately.
No, but I mean, all of these points support our overall point, like we said, which is they did a pretty good job of founding a university. Like the mission was great. The details were pretty great. Better than we've done. For sure. Ours is still kind of getting off the ground. It's just basically a grift right now. Right. But hopefully we'll be able to build it into something real. Yeah.
There is an issue with finding a president. Apparently, the presidents they were looking for were like, I'm good here. I don't feel like moving out west. I think that was a big part of it. Like, California was not like California as it is now. The Stanford University helped make Northern California what it is now. Mm-hmm. So it was still rugged, you know.
They couldn't get just any Eastern college president to hop from his college out to Stanford. They finally found a former president of Indiana University named David Starr Jordan, who was also an ichthyologist by training and trade. He finally took them up on the offer. That's right. And he also had a lot of pretty gross views on things. Yeah, like super. In retrospect, he was into eugenics.
He thought scientific racism was pretty great and that if you're unfit, like if you're disabled or if you're in prison, maybe we should just sterilize you.
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Chapter 8: How has public perception of Jane Stanford's death evolved over time?
And yeah, women should get educated, but just so they can be smarter in the home as homemakers. He was also like a vocal pacifist, which you're kind of like, oh, OK, that's not bad. The reason why he was a pacifist was because he felt war promoted racial degradation because you send the fittest young men off to die.
That leaves the weak to stay home and procreate and it degenerates the race or society back home. That was the reason he was a pacifist and anti-war. Yeah, there was nothing he could do right, basically, with that set of views. Yeah, I agree. I think we should probably take a break. Yeah. Set the stage for Stanford's founding. Sure. And we'll be right back with more on Jane Stanford.
If you want to know, then you're in luck. Just listen up to Josh and Chuck.
Stuff you should. On June 11, 1998, a deputy from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department went missing.
It's an all-out manhunt for John Auge. Every search and rescue team in L.A. County has been called in to help.
Within days, tips started flooding into the Sheriff's Department.
The ruler around the drug scene was that a deputy was taken care of.
Is this the story of a man who just got lost in the desert? Or of a cover-up inside the nation's largest sheriff's department?
A homicide captain saying, detective, do not find out if this guy's guilty or innocent. Who does that?
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