Johns Hopkins left $7 million in railroad stock to found a hospital, the stock stopped paying, and records found in 2020 showed he had owned slaves

Johns Hopkins died in 1873, aged 78. His will left about $7 million to found a university, a hospital and an orphanage for Black children, then the largest philanthropic bequest in US history. Dividends from Baltimore and Ohio Railroad stock were to pay for the medical school. In the late 1880s the stock stopped paying dividends and the money ran out. Mary Elizabeth Garrett, from one of America's richest families, and three friends raised $100,000, half from her own funds. Her condition was that women be admitted on the same terms as men. The board agreed reluctantly. When $500,000 was still missing, she gave $300,000 more, with a further condition that applicants have four years of college and read French and German. The school opened in 1893. In 1929 his grandniece Helen Hopkins Thom published a book calling him a strong abolitionist and saying his father had freed the family's slaves in 1807. In May 2020 the historian Allison Seyler found the 1850 slave schedule. It lists Johns Hopkins as holding four enslaved men, aged 50, 45, 25 and 18. The 1840 census lists one; the 1860 census lists none. On 9 December 2020 the university announced the findings. Their names are unknown.