Review of 1891:A Novel about Stanford University

Steve Staiger, Historian, Palo Alto Historical Association, The Tall Tree, November 2007

I just finished reading a novel covering the early days of Stanford. Entitled 1891: A Novel about Stanford University, it is part of a planned, four-volume saga by author Jerry Franks. He was 79 years old when he wrote this first installment, but he claims to be working hard on the subsequent volumes. The author did a great deal of his early research using our archives. Beth Bunnenberg would help him as he searched through our files on Stanford and Mayfield.

            Chapter One introduces major characters Orrin Leslie Elliott and his wife Ellen in Ithaca, New York, but quickly moves them and the other characters such as Dr. Jordan and a group of males students living at Encina Hall to the brand new Stanford University campus. Franks vividly recreates everyday life for faculty and students on the campus as well as life in the town of Mayfield. Perhaps Palo Alto was too new to play a role in this first volume. I enjoyed his description and play-by-play of the first faculty-student baseball game, where the faculty led by captain and first baseman Dr. Jordan are defeated by the students in a long, hard fought battle. He has several of the students travel to San Francisco, visiting Chinatown at the time of the Tong wars. Over Thanksgiving holiday we see life in the South Bay as hikers and bicyclists climb Mount Hamilton with a hazardous outcome.

            When we read historical fiction there is always the opportunity to be entertained while learning more about a time and place that interests the reader. I enjoyed the author’s re-creation of historic events of which I had some degree of familiarity. For an author there is always the danger of introducing anachronistic elements into his storyline. A minor example in this novel was a visit to a Mayfield farmhouse discovered by finding a name on the mailbox. Home mail delivery in this area was still 13 years in the future, even longer for rural delivery

            A more significant example involves an attempted assassination of Leland Stanford by one of the characters, who blamed him, in his role as the Governor of California, for the death of her father in the Mussel Slough battle. Stanford was Governor in the early 1860’s, nearly 20 years before that incident.

            Putting these minor details aside, the author has created an interesting story and a group of characters that promise a great deal more in the future volumes. He left us hanging at the end of the first volume. Is Timothy Hopkins really the villain hinted to in this first volume? We will have to wait and see.

~~