Jane Lathrop Stanford (b. Lathrop) (1828-1905) was born in Albany, New York, and died in Honolulu, Hawaii. She attended The Albany Academy for Girls and later married Leland Stanford in 1850. In 1855, they moved to Sacramento, California, where Leland engaged in mercantile pursuits and was a co-founder of the Central Pacific Railroad, serving as its president from 1861 until his death in 1893. He was also president of the Southern Pacific Railroad, served as governor of California from 1862 to 1863, and was a United States Senator from California from 1885 until his death. The couple co-founded Stanford University, and Stanford continued to devote herself to it after Leland's death. In a 1887 letter addressed to Mary Baker Eddy, Laura V. Lathrop, a student of Eddy's, wrote that she gave Stanford private Christian Science lessons after Stanford had started studying with metaphysician Ellen H. Sheldon.

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