Her sister Vera Sanford was a professor of mathematics and author of textbooks at State Teachers College at Oneonta, New York.
[4] Sanford's work focused on the translation, understanding, and transmission of the medieval sources for classical literature.
[1] As a Fulbright Scholar in 1950, Sanford travelled to Italy and France in search of Medieval commentaries on Juvenal.
[5] Sanford was also engaged in early work on finger signs in calculations in antiquity and published a text on the subject in 1928.
[6][7] Before she died, Sanford was in the process of translating the De Civitate Dei of Augustine for the Loeb Classical Library.