George Crocker’s Golden Cure

When a periodical drunkard poisons his nerve centers he soon drowns out feeling, conscience, sensation, emotion, will and thought. The cells are staggered and paralyzed. The more violent the onslaught the more violent the resistance and the greater the reaction and also the greater the variation. In a few days the inebriate’s stomach will not bear food.-–Dr. Leslie Keeley

Of the three boys of the great and powerful Charles Crocker, George gave the most of his time to enjoyment and the least to business cares. He was a hale fellow well met with a host of friends, most of whom believed he would remain a confirmed bachelor, giving his time to clubs, field sports (he had a reputation as an excellent wing shot) and travel. Family members hoped that he would steady and settle down. A few comrades hoped that he would settle up, for he was free with his money and at times spent it faster than it came in. During the holiday season of ’83, sister Hattie confided with her mother about the dalliances of the perpetually hungover George and his brothers, “…the boys have had a grand time, they are always out having what they call an ‘eggnog treat.’ (Bad thing for young men).” In time George began to show the effects of excessive celebration.

The New York Times described George as “one of the most reckless young men about town when reckless young men thereabouts were common.” By his late twenties, George Crocker was a full-fledged “dipsomaniac.” Periodic binges left him in a deplorable state mentally and physically. Alcohol robbed him of judgment and restraint. Satisfying his craving eclipsed all sense of honor and shame. His dependency, punctuated by episodes of “misbehavior,” proved so troubling that he was disinherited—deprived of his share of one of the largest fortunes not just in America, but in American history.

In letters mother Mary Ann wrote to her husband Charles “Bull” Crocker, the iron-willed builder of the world’s first transcontinental railroad, that she was unhappy with the sullen, rebellious and “fitful” George, and that she feared for his health. He was constantly tired and complained of headaches, not surprising considering the hours he kept, and his peripatetic lifestyle.

She was fearful that George had, and in the future would have, “too much money to make him in dead earnest about anything.” She didn’t like his companions. She didn’t like that gold-digger hussy Lizzy Hull, who was not a member of society’s top ten percent, and who was constantly hovering around her vulnerable son. The marriage that Lizzie was angling towards would result in unhappiness for her and his utter ruin, according to Mother Crocker whose meddling sometimes aroused animosity.

Charles responded, “George is my only trouble now, and once he is stable and fixed I shall be ready to go to that home from which no traveler returns…My own happiness in the future will depend in a great measure in the happiness and good standing of my children… I will be willing to die satisfied that I have not lived in vain if George can be added to my children as their peer in sobriety and virtue.”

An unpublished clause in his 1887 will offered up a plan for his derailed son:

…if at any time within fifteen years after the death of said Charles Crocker the said trustees or their survivors or successors shall be satisfied that his son, the said George Crocker, shall, at any times after the said 22nd day of April, 1887, for the space of five years continuously abstained from the use of spirits, vinous and malt liquors to the extent that he shall not during such period have been intoxicated, then at such time the whole of said trust property with the interest thereon and the income thereof shall vest in and become the property of the said George Crocker, and that the said trustees and their survivors and successors shall thereupon assign, transfer and deliver the same to said George Crocker.

George was uninspired by the ultimatum and made no effort to seek out sobriety and his claim to his father’s enormous fortune.

The prodigal son was not left homeless and destitute. In his will Charles deeded one-quarter of a 375,000 acre ranch at Promontory, Utah, one of the ten largest ranches in the nation, and ordered that every dollar George had invested towards its purchase be repaid. During a sober stretch, George partnered with two friends to purchase the Central Pacific owned grazing land and 20,000 head of horned cattle in November of 1885.

It was a calculated gift. While withholding the empire, he endowed a substantial inheritance that would not merely enrich, but would encourage reform. It removed George from the glitter and temptations of San Francisco—the gentleman’s clubs, the late suppers, the gold diggers—and set him down on a wind-swept frontier where hard work ruled the day. Utah was then a dry territory, shaped by Mormon temperance; liquor did not circulate there as it did at the Bohemian Club and the Barbary Coast. There were no cotillions, no theater boxes, no idle afternoons dissolving into champagne evenings.

Charles saw to it that his son would not lack for footing: land beneath him, honest work that would reward him, and dignity to steady him. It was a provision, and also a probation.

A year later George received from his adoring mother, the family’s Nob Hill mega-mansion on California St. in San Francisco, thus undercutting Charles’ efforts at undoing redrawing the map of their son’s life. She instead offered up an incentive to return to temptations and the troublesome companions who had helped make George notorious.

Charles died in August of  ’88. He suffered from diabetes and was in the phase of the disease known as acetonemia which causes blood poisoning. He had gone into a diabetic coma two months earlier but recovered. Many thought a chief factor of his death was being thrown from his buggy a year earlier in New York when he challenged banker D.O. Mills (his son Fred’s father-in-law) to a race.

George was himself severely injured a month after his father’s death, in Chicago, while riding in a hansom cab, going through the glass doors and onto the street. He was badly cut about the face and neck and bled profusely. It was feared that he would lose his eyesight.

The accident was an outpicture of his inner turmoil and grief.

George could never rival the mythic stature of his superhero father, who not only built the first transcontinental railroad, blasting through mountains and bridging vast ravines, but the Crocker-Huffman Canal and Diversion Dam, converting an arid region of California into fertile, productive agricultural land. When Crocker’s sprawling seaside resort Del Monte was destroyed by fire in April of 1887, he had it rebuilt and online in 100 days. The indomitable and energetic Charles led construction crews of up to 10,000 men and was compared in print to the great Civil War General Tecumseh Sherman.

Mary Ann died a year later. She declined an invitation to dine at a friend’s residence, accompanied by George, (who she doted over), because she felt under the weather. A doctor was summoned and gave Mrs. Crocker a clean bill of health. She quietly passed away of a paralytic stroke without uttering a word while those in the house, including George, believed her napping. Tributes praised her benevolence: kindergartens founded, a home for friendless girls established, an Old People’s Home endowed. Her holdings were vast—100,000 acres of land in a dozen California counties, interests in more than thirty railroads and multiple steamship lines.

Both parents would die disappointed in their hapless and hopeless son. The black sheep of the family. George in 1889, at aged 33, was left a lonesome and heartbroken orphan, without children and a wife of his own, bleary-eyed and without direction.

Back in the ’80s George had been a princely presence at many a grand social gathering: the Hopkins reception, the Sheldon musicale, Mrs. Rutherford’s kettledrum, yacht parties on the Haleyon, all the Friday Cotillion Club gatherings, the stag party for Henry Lockwood near Los Angeles…

He hosted revels aboard a luxurious SPRR rail car, a mansion on wheels, abundant with flowers, fruit, and fine confectionery. The studly George entertained a box full of debutantes at the Baldwin Theater to see Clara Morris—whom Oscar Wilde called “the greatest actress I ever saw.”

George spent many an evening with his younger cousin Amy, the other Crocker family black sheep, and her first husband Porter Ashe, who was a Bohemian Club chum. He would be among the bad influences that Mary Ann would detest as a companion for her favorite son. Back in 1885 at the state fair racetrack, west coast aristocratic rebels Amy, Porter and George partied in the Director’s stand with Governor Stoneman himself, along with Senators Leland Stanford and James Fair.

In ’87, a few months after George got his cut off notice, he challenged Porter to a cockfight. He told him to buy some fowls at the market, and he would bring some from his yard. George put into the pit a beautiful Earl of Derby, black and red, and full of spring. Mr. Ashe presented a huge ungainly Malachi Fallon 7 lb. hen feather. Everybody laughed. Porter, the nationally known turf man with a corral of champion race horses, proved the more cunning gambler winning 9 out of 10 bouts. He took $3,000 from cousin George that afternoon ($102,000 today).

His episodic binges fell from bad to worse after the death of his parents. George discovered that all the behaviors that made him the cool kid rebel in his teens and twenties, were turning him into a sloppy, unbalanced pariah in his thirties. In July of 1891, the Examiner wrote articles clearing George of floating rumors that he shot a senator’s son in Monterey over a lady—yellow journalism, perhaps, but not implausible given his reputation. He was clearly vying for the title of town drunk.

The once strikingly handsome George became bloated and unkempt.

Yet he retained loyal friends: the Mizners, the Rutherfords—Emma and Alex, and the Fair siblings—Charles, Jim and Tessie, children of the former senator from Nevada. With Emma and her sister Virginia he traveled to Los Angeles, Del Monte, Yosemite. It would be the Fairs and the Rutherfords who would convince George to seek sobriety. Charles and Jim Fair, themselves ravaged by drink, sought relief through hypnotist J. Frank Brown, whose controversial treatments rendered them temporarily abstinent—so repelled by whiskey that its mere scent provoked nausea. For a time, the wealthy brothers “prostrated by cerebral excitement,” as society delicately phrased it, kept the bottle at bay.

For George, however, the battle between inheritance and impulse, between legacy and self-destruction, remained unresolved—a Gilded Age tragedy unfolding beneath chandeliers and gaslight.

 

He began his probation

Distance from temptation, breadth of land, and the discipline of ranch life—these were to be the father’s final architecture, an attempt to build in his son the sobriety he could not simply bequeath.

Before Charles Crocker died he was persuaded that his son George was a young man somewhat intemperate in his habits. He appeared unequal to the task of remaining sober for any length of time worth considering. He was a jolly fellow well met in all places, and at all times. Charles Crocker was convinced that George needed some sort of a check.

—–“Wants His Money.  George Crocker in a Novel Attitude,” LA Times, Jun 12, 1894, p2.

Suit has been brought up by C.F. Crocker and W.H. Crocker to terminate a trust under the will of the late Charles Crocker by which they made custodians of 490 thousand-dollar bonds on behalf of George Crocker. The terms of the trust are that if within the 15 years immediately succeeding the testator’s death George Crocker should for five years abstain from the use of intoxicating liquor the bonds shall be turned over to him. Otherwise at the end of 15 years they are to go to the other heirs…The plaintiffs aver that from September 22, 1891 to Sep 22, 1896, George Crocker has abstained.

—–Abstained Five Years,” The Salt Lake Tribune (Salt Lake City, Utah) · Thu, Sep 24, 1896 · Page 8

 It was further provided that should George Crocker die without fulfilling the condition of the trust, or fail, for any reason, to observe such condition, the trust property what’s to go in equal shares to the children of Charles F and William H Crocker and Mrs. Alexander.

References made in the complaint to the will of Crocker, dated May 2nd, 1887. By this will the residue of the estate was bequeathed to his widow, Mary a Crocker, and his sons, Charles F and William H. Crocker. An agreement made the same day accepted from the residue the property which had previously been conveyed in trust for George Crocker.

—– $500,000 for Keeping Sober, Democrat_and_Chronicle_Sun__Oct_18__1896_

M he was his mother’s favorite and the prodigal son of the family.

For some time George made no attempt to fulfill the trust conditions. On September 22nd, 1891, he made his start on a career of sobriety and the time expired last month.

By remaining sober for five years Mr. Crocker comes into the possession not only of $490,000 worth of Southern Pacific railway bonds, but of a 1/8 interest in his father’s estate as well, the whole amount reaching $4 million.

The family friends opposed him to be virtually disinherited, except for his interest in the big ranch. By his mother’s will he came into the family residence at California and Taylor streets.

Mrs. George Crocker said last night, we are very pleased that the whole thing is settled. Now my husband is an equal heir with his brothers. The 1/8 interest in the Crocker estate, while nominally bequeathed to the others, was in fact only left to them under a secret agreement in the trust for him.

—–“George Crocker’s Four Millions,” SF Chronicle, Oct 29, 1896, p16.

“A Reward for Sobriety,” NYT Oct 29, 1896, p1

failed to bequeath a portion of his property to his son George, who was given to overindulgence in intoxicants. Instead, he placed 490 bonds of the Southern Pacific Company in the hands of the other two sons in trust for George, with the provision that if within fifteen years after the death of the founder of the fund George Crocker should stay sober for five consecutive years the principal should be turned over to him.

If, however, he failed to abstain from overindulgence the bonds were to be distributed among certain grandchildren of Charles Crocker.

Judge Daingerfieid in his findings, declares that George Crocker has not only not been intoxicated during his period of probation, but that he totally abstained from the use of all spirituous wines and malt liquors during that period.

—–“Money Easily Earned,” The SF Call, Oct 29, 1896, p12.

said agreement further provides that

 

4M=155M today

Aug 1, 1881 George and Dr. Shorb kill 150 doves at Livermore in one forenoon.

—–“Hunters and Hunted,” The_San_Francisco_Call_Bulletin_1881_08_01_1

.

George buys 150K worth of cattle from Russell & Bradley on the 15^th.

—–“Big Cattle Sale,” Salt_Lake_Tribune_1886_03_20_Page_3_News of Our Neighbors

Lizzie Hull marries J.D. Grant. Lansing Mizner is an usher. C.F., Stanford, Redding and A.H. Rutherford are there.

—–“Grant-Hull,” SF Examiner, Nov 11, 1886, p2.

You must not give up going out. Keep up your calls. Society’s good for one, for it helps to refine one’s tastes. It keeps one from becoming quiet and selfish. See how lucky Fred is and Will is always visiting. Take good care of Mama. Go out with her whenever she desires it. She is your best friend and now is your chance for returning to some extent all the care and devotion she has shown you for so long.

 

I told him a few days ago that if he did he must keep sober. I reminded him that Papa was going for rest and relaxation and that he must not have anxiety to bother him, and that if he did go to drinking again he must leave.

a ranching and cattle raising business in Utah. While ranching seemed an unlikely career choice for the hapless George, Mary Ann encouraged his newfound energy. Nor was it lost on her and Charles that Utah was a dry state.

I don’t like that. He needs the right kind of companions, for he will be in great temptation,… and I fear will not stand up… poor fellow, when all this could have been avoided if he had stuck to business and let drink alone.

 

 

 

—–“A Bachelor Dinner Party,” SF Chronicle Sep 25, 1882, p4.

—–Charity thwarted. How the boys and girls aid society lost a donation. Porter Ashe got it,” SF Examiner, Sep 18, 1887, p15

—–Charles de Limur, Golden Girl: The Remarkable Life and Travels of Harriet Valentine Crocker (1859 to 1938), edited by Gretchen de Limur,  privately printed (San Francisco: 2017).

—–“Clara Morris. Her Appearance at the Baldwin,”  San Francisco Chronicle, Feb 1, 1887, p5.

—–“Fatal to Drunkenness,” The Weekly Sun, Apr 23, 1891, p3.

—–“George Crocker Dies of Cancer,” NYT, Dec 5, 1909, p13.

—–“George Crocker Severely Hurt,” NY Tribune, Sep 26, 1888, p7.

—–Mrs. Crocker Dead, SF Chronicle, Oct 28, 1889, p8.

—–“Recent Entertainments,” SF Chronicle, Jun 5, 1882, p4

—–“Recent Events,” SF Chronicle, Jan 13, 1885, p2

—–Remarkable Accident,” The Inter Ocean (Chicago, Illinois) · Tue, Sep 25, 1888 · Page 7.

—–“The Hopkins Reception,” The San Francisco Call Bulletin, Jan 10, 1882, p5

—–“The Sheldon Musicale,” SF Call Bulletin, Nov 21, 1885, p5.

—–“The State Fair,” San_Francisco_Chronicle_1885_09_22_2

—–The State Fair The_San_Francisco_Examiner_1885_09_17_2

—–“The Toy Pistol Story,” SF Examiner, Jul 31, 1891, p3.

—–“Under Mesmeric Sway,” SF Examiner, Nov 27, 1890, p1.