Page:Women of the West.djvu/30

Rh 'Twere folly to mention the prominent women of the day, lest I leave out some, as the list is long. Suffice it to say, that California is proud of her daughters, and it is a pride not arrogant, but based on true merit.

In all phases of progressive efforts, one finds the women of California well to the front. If now we present an outstanding figure in a limited group, it is because with the flight of years, those who knew Jane Lathrop Stanford are, one by one, rapidly passing from the stage. Even among them, also, were many who never fully realized her vital contribution to the world.

Born in 1828 and married in 1850, in Albany, New York, to a young lawyer of marked promise and integrity, as Mrs. Leland Stanford, she lived a life of steadily increasing interest and richness. From 1861 on, Mr. Stanford's political career, first as War Governor of California, and later, as senator from his state at Washington, made her sharer in affairs of import, both local and national. Wifehood and motherhood, nevertheless, she regarded always as the supreme experiences of womankind. Yet, when the loss of her husband in 1893 threw upon her shoulders a wholly unaccustomed burden of enormous magnitude—when the institution they had founded in grief, in memory of their only child, a son, dead on the threshold of manhood, seemed jeapordizedjeopardized [sic] to the point of extinction by financial complexities—this mid-Victorian wife and mother began to display a keenness of judgment, business acumen and determination, astonishing to the few familiar with her conduct of affairs. As surviving founder of Stanford University, by heroic personal effort of many kinds, she then succeeded in ensuring to California a benefaction of incalculable value. The story of this lone struggle cannot here be told. But it should perhaps be added, that even in the darkest hours of those six years of unjust and cramping litigation, she waited on her God, to whose support she humbly ascribed the final victory. Indeed, not even the briefest discussion of Jane Lathrop Stanford's life would be complete without a reference to her deep and abiding religious faith.