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	Name:	MythBuster -
	Subject:	Nice... but not true.
	Date:	6/6/2007 7:34:02 PM

"Won't Stanford It

Claim: Mr. and Mrs. Leland Stanford decided to found their own university after being rebuffed in an attempt to donate a building to Harvard.

Status: False.

Origins: This "Chicken Soup"-like tale warning us against the folly of judging people solely by appearances hit the Internet in mid-1998. As usual, the framework of the tale bears some general resemblance to the truth, but details have been altered that turn it into something quite different from the real story:

*Leland Stanford was a wealthy Sacramento merchant, a railroad magnate who built the Central Pacific Railroad (and drove the gold spike at Promontory Summit, Utah, in 1869), and California's eighth governor (1862-63). He was hardly the type of person to dress in a "homespun threadbare suit," walk "timidly" into someone's office (especially without an appointment), or sit cooling his heels "for hours" until someone deigned to see him.

* The Stanfords' only son died of typhoid fever at age 15, in Florence, Italy. That would have made him a bit young to have attended Harvard, and his death would hardly be described as "accidental."

The closest this story comes to reality is in its acknowledgement that the Stanfords did visit Harvard (among other schools) to gather ideas for creating an educational institution of their own (not to discuss endowing Harvard with some type of facility — the Stanfords had already decided that whatever facility they built would be their own, located in northern California). As Stanford's web site describes the incident:
The Stanfords returned to America in May and, before proceeding to Palo Alto, visited Cornell, Yale, Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They talked with President Eliot of Harvard about three ideas: a university at Palo Alto, a large institution in San Francisco combining a lecture hall and a museum, and a technical school. They asked him which of these seemed most desirable and President Eliot answered, a university. Mrs. Stanford then asked him how much the endowment should be, in addition to land and buildings, and he replied, not less than $5 million. A silence followed and Mrs. Stanford looked grave. Finally, Mr. Stanford said with a smile, "Well, Jane, we could manage that, couldn't we?" and Mrs. Stanford nodded her assent.
The Stanfords did found their university (modeled after Cornell and located on the grounds of their horse-trotting farm) in memory of their son (hence the school's official name of "Leland Stanford Junior University"), but not because they were rudely rebuffed by Harvard's president — because it was what they had intended all along.

A 2001 version of this e-mail falsely attributes the piece to Malcolm Forbes, the founder and publisher of Forbes (a highly respected business magazine).

The "rudely-spurned university endowment" theme of the Stanford story has played out at least once in real life. In July 1998, William Lindsay of Las Vegas contacted an unnamed Scottish institution of higher learning by telephone, saying he was minded to give some money to a university in Scotland. Taking him for a crank, he was rudely dismissed by the person he spoke to. His next call to Glasgow University met with a warmer reception, and in March 2000 that school received a check for £1.2 million, enough to endow a professorship in Lindsay's name.

The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/glurge/stanford.asp"

URL: The real story