William Henry Crocker I (January 13, 1861 – September 25, 1937) was a member of the wealthy
Crocker family and a prominent member of the
Republican Party. Over the course of his business career, he became the president of
Crocker National Bank.
His nephew,
Harry Crocker, was a movie star in the 1920s and, at one time, the personal assistant of
Charlie Chaplin.
His cousin,
Aimee Crocker, was a Bohemian mystic who garnered publicity for her extravagant parties in
New York, San Francisco and
Paris, for her five husbands and many lovers, for her
tattoos, and for living 10 years in the Far East, not as a tourist, but as if a native.[3]
His cousin,
Henry J. Crocker, was a prominent San Franciscan businessman and one of the
Committee of Fifty, who got into a well documented public feud with William, eventually leading to a court ruling against him in his claim of having been defrauded by his own cousin.[4]
William H. Crocker's
Queen Anne style mansion (1888), formerly at 1150 California Street, now the site of the Choir of
Grace Cathedral
Career
Crocker was president of Crocker National Bank. When much of the city of
San Francisco was destroyed by the fire from the
1906 earthquake, Crocker and his bank were major forces in financing reconstruction.
Crocker also was a director of the Sperry Flour Co., the company of his wife's family owning a chain of flour mills across the US, a truly global conglomerate, with branches as far away as Hong-Kong and Norway.[5],[6],[7],[8]
After the 1906 earthquake and fire had left both the adjacent mansions of W.H. Crocker and his father in ruins, in 1907 he donated the Crocker family's 2.6-acre (11,000 m2)
Nob Hill block for
Grace Cathedral.[9],[10]
He was a member of the
University of California Board of Regents for nearly thirty years and funded the
Lawrence Radiation Laboratory's million-volt x-ray tube at the UC hospital and the "medical" Crocker cyclotron used for neutron therapy at Berkeley.[11] In 1936, Crocker contributed $75,000 toward the building of a laboratory for
Ernest O. Lawrence at the
University of California, Berkeley, which was subsequently named "Crocker Radiation Laboratory" in his honor.[12] This laboratory became home to the Berkeley 60" cyclotron. In the 1960s, parts of this cyclotron were moved to the
University of California, Davis, where they were the basis for the Crocker Nuclear Laboratory,[13] which inherited its name from the original.[14][15]
Surviving items of Ethel's Egyptian and Byzantine textile collection were on loan to the
San Francisco Museum of Art until 1953, when the collection was shipped to
Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C.[19],[20]
Philately
The block of four of the 1869 24c United States stamps with inverted centre owned by Crocker (shown inverted).[21]
As his cousin,
Henry J. Crocker, William H. Crocker was a noted philatelist and the owner of the unique block of four of the 1869 24c United States stamps with inverted centre formerly the property of
William Thorne.[21][22]
The stamp collection survived because it was on tour abroad at the time.
Personal life
Crocker was married to
Ethel Sperry (1861–1934),[23] who become treasurer of the Woman’s Belgian Relief Fund in San Francisco and State Chair for The Woman’s Section of the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB), while William chaired the men's committee of the Belgian Relief Fund in San Francisco, who were to send the first '
State Ship', the SS Camino, with food aid, on 5 December 1914, over to the port of
Rotterdam,
the Netherlands, which remained neutral during WWI. She was also the leading patron of French
Impressionist art in California at that time.[24]
After the 1906 earthquake destroyed their San Francisco home, William relocated the family to a new home in Hillsborough (CA) in 1910.[26],[27] The grand estate was aptly named "New Place", now part of the
Burlingame Country Club clubhouse.[28],[23] The buildings were designed by
Lewis P. Hobart, the lavish gardens by Bruce Potter. Some of the fragile original
lantern slides on glass of the property by
Frances Benjamin Johnston, an artist of the era, have survived to this day.[25]
Children
Together, William and Ethel were the parents of four children:[29]
Ethel Mary Crocker (1891–1964), who married French (former) Count André de Limur in 1918, who gave William and Ethel their first grand-daughter.[30][31]
William Willard Crocker (1893–1964), who married Ruth Hobart, daughter of playboy Walter Hobart and granddaughter of the Comstock silver millionaire
Walter S. Hobart, in 1923. They divorced in 1948 and he married Gertrude (née Hopkins) Parrott, former wife of William G. Parrott. After her death in 1958, he married Elizabeth (née Fullerton) Coleman, former wife of
George L. Coleman, in 1960. After his death, she married
Alexander Montagu, 10th Duke of Manchester.
Helen Crocker (1897–1966), who married Henry Potter Russell, a son of Charles Howland Russell who was previously married to
Ethel Borden Harriman.
Charles Crocker (1904–1961), who married Virginia Bennett in 1926. They divorced and he married Marguerite Brokaw, a daughter of
Howard Crosby Brokaw, in 1938. After his death, she married Charles Norton Adams.