Physician
Centurion, 1918–1950
Born 19 September 1868 in New Haven, Connecticut
Died 7 December 1950 in Port Sewall, Florida
Buried Grove Street Cemetery
, New Haven, Connecticut
Proposed by Frank M. Chapman and Max Farrand
Elected 1 June 1918 at age forty-nine
Century Memorial
Dr. Sanford graduated from Yale in 1890 and from the Yale Medical School in 1893. He was for long a surgeon on the staff of the New Haven Hospital.
In 1919 he gave up medicine in favor of ornithology. He was enormously interested in birds, and always had been; and he not only knew about them, but he was a marvellously skilful taxidermist and could skin and mount a bird better than any but the most expert professionals. He had great strength and dexterity with his hands; his penmanship was exquisite; and the delicacy and precision of his manual operations were a delight to see.
He was a great collector, and he infected others with his enthusiasm. His contributions and those he procured others to make to the American Museum of Natural History are of the utmost scientific value.
Dr. Sanford was elected a Trustee of the Museum in 1921. For ten years before that he had missed no opportunity to enhance the importance of several of its departments by giving, or inducing others to give, rare birds, insects, mammals and other needed specimens. During nearly 30 years of his service as a Trustee, the Museum was always his greatest interest in life. No project was too large for him to contemplate, as he first showed in 1911 when he persuaded Mr. Frederick F. Brewster of New Haven to finance a great marine ornithological expedition around the entire coastline of South America. This work continued for five years, resulting in the acquisition of nearly 8,000 study skins of oceanic and littoral birds. Later Dr. Sanford interested Mr. Harry Payne Whitney, his wife and three children in the Museum, a fact responsible for the Whitney South Sea Expedition, which was the greatest piece of ornithological field work in history. Dr. Sanford’s influence with the Whitney family led also to the acquisition of the Rothschild Collection of birds and to the entire wing of the Museum structure which houses the Department of Birds.
In 1948 one of the newest and most important of the Museum exhibits was dedicated as the “Leonard C. Sanford Hall of Biology of Birds.”
George W. Martin
1951/1952 Century Association Yearbook