Summary of the eRumor: According to the story, two "country hicks" came to
Harvard and wanted to talk with the president. A haughty secretary
resisted the couple and made them wait for hours. In exasperation, she
finally asked the president to see the visitors, which he did if for no
other reason to get rid of them. The couple told him their son had attended
Harvard for a year and he had loved it, but had been killed in an accident
and they wanted to build a memorial to him. The president discouraged them,
saying they couldn't erect a memorial to every student who had died. The
couple said they were thinking of donating for an entire building in their
son's honor. The president discouraged them and mentioned how much all of
the buildings at Harvard were worth. The lady commented to her husband that
if that was all it took to build a university, they ought to construct
their own. So...Mr. and Mrs. Leland Stanford went to Palo Alto, California
and built a school in honor of their son...a memorial to a student that
Harvard no longer cared about.
The Truth: According to Stanford University, this eRumor is not true.
Leland Stanford was once governor of California and in 1876, he bought the
first of what would become more than 8,000 acres of land on the San
Francisco peninsula. Leland and Jane Stanford had one son, Leland, Jr., but
he never attended Harvard. He died at the age of 15 on a family trip to
Italy, but from typhoid fever, not from an accident. Within a few hours of
his son's death, Stanford said to his wife, "The children of California
shall be our children." That was the beginning of Stanford University,
according to the official account.
