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Few American families in the late 19th century captured the public's imagination as did the Stanford family. Their good fortune had been considerable, making their tragedy all the more compelling. This influential family's experiences spanned a dramatic century of movement and change: from busy antebellum Albany, New York to Gold Rush California, from civil war turbulence and gilded age opulence to the sobering realities of economic depression and social reform of the 1890s. Leland Stanford, railroad baron, Civil War governor, and, later, U.S. Senator, and his wife, Jane Lathrop Stanford, were among California's most influential citizens. Their Sacramento and San Francisco mansions stood as monuments to their success. The Palo Alto Farm, their country home, was the centerpiece of more than 100,000 acres throughout the state devoted to experimental stock breeding, viticulture, and agriculture. Their son Leland Jr., a healthy boy with a lively intellect, had firm interests and a bright future. His tragic death in 1884 at the age of 15, however, dramatically changed his parents' lives. With their son's age and interests in mind, Leland and Jane Stanford established not one but many educational institutions. Foremost today is Stanford University, opened in 1891, but the Stanfords also founded a night school for farm employees; kindergartens (experimental in the 1880s) in Menlo Park and San Francisco; an orphanage in Sacramento; a shelter for working women and their children in Albany, N.Y. While Leland Stanford Junior University remained for Senator Stanford the heart of his son's memorial, for Jane Stanford its soul, the "connecting link," was to be found in the Leland Stanford Junior Museum. Leland Jr.'s interests in antiquities and anthropological artifacts had matured greatly from souvenirs and curiosities to careful purchases of Greek and Roman glassware and Egyptian, Asian and North American artifacts. These collections, augmented by the Stanfords' interest in American and European fine arts, form the nucleus of the Stanford Family Collections featured throughout the Center's galleries. Roxanne Nilan, Guest Curator, Stanford Family Collections
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 Felix Chary (France, active 1880s) Portrait of Leland Stanford, Jr., 1884 Oil on canvas 161.29 x 118.11 cm. 1963.88 Stanford Family Collections
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