The morning call., 1893-06-21
LELAND STANFORD.
His Was a Prominent Place in Cali
ifornia History.

Ills was prominent Place in Cali
ifornia History.
Leland Stanford was born about eight
miles from the city of ALBANY. N Y,
March Q. 1924. He is the fourth of seven
b2others, all of whom are still living save !
one. Bis ancestors came over from
England more than fifty years before
the Revolution of 1776, and settled in the
Mohawk Valley. They were farmers of
good repute, thrifty and Industrious. Five
generations of them have lived to till the
soil of the Empire State. Josiah Stan
ford. the father of Leland, was
man of marked public spirit and
energy. Besides cultivating his farm,
he took contracts for building roads and
bridges in all parts of his native county.
He was among the first advocates of the
Erie canal, and watched its progress and
completion with the keenest interest he
saw with prophetic eye that it was but the
beginning of that vast system of internal
improvements that was to make his State
SO famous. In 1928 the locomotive burst
upon the world like a miracle. More than
all the agencies of previous times com bined,
it came charged with power TO revolution
ize commerce and to immeasurably improve
mans social and physical condition. The
phenson's locomotive engine, 1.-The
l.acket." on the Manchester and
Liverpool road. had crossed the
Atlantic but a few months be-
fore charter was obtained in 1929
from the Legislature of the State of New
York for a railroad between Albany and
schenectady. Josiah Stanford was among
the foremost in the new enterprise. He
took big contracts for grading and pushed
forward the work with the greatest vigor,
and from that day to this the Stanfords
have more or less been engaged in the
honorable business Of railroad building.
O3e of them commenced work on the first
ir0u road built in the . nited States, and one,
tile subject Of this sketch, and a son of
that pioneer, forty years later, drove,
with his strong hand, the last spike of the
great Pacific Railroad. The Albany and
Schenectady Railroad, fifteen miles in
length, forms one of the links in the over
land road. which measures 5000 miles be-
tween the Atlantic and the Pacific.
What the father commenced his son
gloriously completed two score of
years afterward. Grand coincidencel
precious heirloom, Of which even a
royal family might be "roud. is this. Till
he was 20 years of age young Leland's
time was OWNED between the healthfuI
occupations of a farm life and his studies.
In 1886 he entered the law office OF
wheaton, Doolittle & Hadly, eminent al
torneys In the city of Albany. After
three years of ratient and hard
study lie was admitted to practice
law in the Supreme Court of
the State of New York Soon after this
he took Horace Greeley's advice. "Younp
man, 90 West" and set out to find a new
home on the frontier. He settled
In Port Washington in the northern
part of Wisconsin. and for four years he
was engaged in the practice of law at that
place. He was only moderately successful
as a lawyer.
his library WINS destroyed by fire at
Port Washington and in the spring of
1852 and the young lawyer, mo-
mentarily disheartened, determined to
carve out name for himself
in California. He arrived in the State on
the 18th of July, and at oace went into the
mercantile business with his brothers,
three of whom had preceded him. They
had a house at Sacramento and several
branches scattered over the State STAN
ford. himself, settled at Michigan Bluff in
Placer County, then great place of trade
with the mines.
He took an active interest in public
affairs also, and early became an ardent
anti-slayery man, belief at that time
calculated to make any man unpop-
ular in California. Stanford went on