MARGARET CROCKER SACRAMENTO'S FIRST LADY OF ART By Lillieanne Chase Special to The Bee Published on May 12, 1985 Page SW8 The young woman carefully raised the long skirt of her dress and stepped onto the loading platform. Eagerly, she surveyed for the first time the dusty frontier outpost which was to be her new home. It was the summer of 1852, and Sacramento was an outfitting point for miners who traveled by steamboat from San Francisco, headed for the gold- studded foothills. The dirt streets were dusty in the hot, dry summers and, as the young wife would soon discover, muddy in the wet winters. Perched on the river bank, the settlement endured frequent flooding. Lit by candles and oil lamps, the cluster of canvas and wood buildings was highly flammable. Margaret Rhodes Crocker was to become an important figure in Sacramento's history. Three decades after her arrival, she bestowed on the city a large art collection and an elegant gallery built to house it. This month the E.B. Crocker Art Gallery celebrates its centennial anniversary. But when she arrived in the Gold Rush country, Margaret Crocker was more familiar with the rigors of pioneer life than the pleasures of fine art. Her parents had settled on uncleared land in Ohio when that was considered the West. Her father died of a rattlesnake bite before Margaret was born in 1821, leaving his pregnant wife with 12 children. Margaret grew up in a hardworking frontier family. She was living with a married sister when she met a young attorney, Edwin Bryant Crocker, at a choral society in South Bend, Ind. His energetic, buoyant spirit matched her merry, resilient nature. Crocker, a widower with a young daughter, decided to join his three brothers in the dry goods business in Sacramento. After a wedding by the then popular Congregationalist minister, Henry Ward Beecher, Edwin and Margaret traveled to California by steamship. Margaret's pioneer credentials were soon tested. During the first months she survived typhoid fever, a major fire and a flood. The couple shared their home with Charles Crocker, Edwin's brother, and his wife Mary. A cloth partition converted one bedroom into two. This is California style, all cloth partitions and cloth plastering, wrote Margaret's sister-in-law. Margaret's early years were consumed with homemaking. Her children covered a span of years, says K.D. Kurutz, curator of education at the Crocker Art Gallery. Her first child was born in 1854, only a couple of years after her arrival here. Between the years of 1854 and 1864, she had five children. She and Edwin were in their early forties by the time their last daughter was born. Their only son died in infancy. Edwin Crocker returned to law, building a large, lucrative practice. His round, bearded face reflected a good-natured, generous spirit. But thorough preparation and an intuitive understanding of legal concepts made him a- forceful courtroom adversary. A fervent abolitionist in Indiana, he had defended runaway slaves along the Underground Railway. The Civil War debate kindled his political interests. He joined several others in forming California's Republican Party. In 1863, then Gov. Leland Stanford appointed Crocker to the Supreme Court. Crocker delivered decisions with such impressive speed that his critics coined the term Crockerism. When his judicial term expired, Crocker became legal counsel and general agent for a business venture that would radically alter the state's history. In 1861, four businessmen had glimpsed a fortune to be made in Theodore Judah's dream of a transcontinental railroad. Margaret and Edwin purchased ten shares in the venture. Though their investment was smaller than that of the big four, it would earn them a fortune. The Crockers shared an enthusiasm which spilled over into many interests. They were leaders in the Sacramento Musical Society and the Congregationalist Church. Edwin and Margaret also shared a Victorian interest in horticulture, says Kurutz. Edwin was at one time the head of an agricultural society. They exhibited certain kinds of plants they had grown, such as vinegar, cotton and mangoes, at the fairs. The fairs also introduced the Crockers to art and such popular California artists as Charles Nahl. By the late 1860s, the crude mining outpost had evolved into a thriving capital city. Victorian mansions surrounded by graceful gardens appeared in the residential district. Margaret and Edwin were members of this prosperous new class. They bought and revamped the mansion of pioneer banker B.F. Hastings at Third and O streets. The Crocker mansion, which eventually included terraced gardens, a swimming pool and stables, became a popular gathering place. Members of the large Rhodes family visited frequently. The five Crocker daughters, which included Edwin's daughter by his first wife, attracted young people who enjoyed piano music or a game of Whist. In 1869, while working on legal case in San Francisco, Ediwn suffered a stroke. It was the first in a series of tragedies for the Crocker family. Crocker retired from his positon with the Central Pacific Railroad and turned his indefatigable energy to an art collection which already included works by Charles Nahl. The couple decided to build a gallery next to their home, which would include a ballroom and entertainment center. Margaret took an avid interest in the building, designed in the style of an Italian villa. Expert craftsmen installed the twin curved stairways, imported tile floor and rich polished woods. The basement housed a billiard room, bowling alleys and skating rink. In 1870 the family combined a tour of Europe and art collecting. Though their art did not always reflect careful selection, they amassed a collection of fine European paintings from the 16th to 19th centuries. They returned to Sacramento in 1872 with 700 paintings and more than 1,000 drawings, the largest and finest private American collection of the time. Though Margaret Crocker was a hearty woman with seemingly boundless generosity, historical documents reveal little evidence of life distinct from her husband's. She was a resourceful pioneer but she was also a Victorian wife. She lived in a very male dominated society, explains curator Kurutz. She was much more in the background during Edwin's life. The years after the European trip altered this pattern. Katie, Margaret's oldest daughter, died in 1874, at age 20. Edwin Crocker died soon after and was followed in death by another daughter, Nellie, who took ill in 1879 while visiting New York. The railroad continued to enlarge the Crocker fortune. After her husband's death, Margaret increased her charitable activities. She bought homes for relatives and provided needy families with monthly stipends. She contributed to schools, churches and orphanages. The Sacramento Bee credited her with one thousand and one little deeds of charity which have lightened many a burden. Besieged with requests, even from outside the state, Margaret hired a secretary to sort through them. Some suggested that Margaret Crocker was a soft touch. But she believed she could risk a few unworty causes to assure that no needy one was missed. Near the city cemetery on Broadway, she commissioned the building of the Bell Conservatory, a smaller model of the glass paneled conservatory in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. One of its purposes was to experiment with exotic plants, says Kurutz. This was in keeping with Margaret's love of flowers. But the conservatory was also a charity because flowers were made available to the poor of the city. On Margaret's birthday in 1884, a reception marked the opening of the Marguerite Home for elderly women. The two-story building included common rooms and 24 bedrooms, each replete with carpet, furnishings and fireplace. Margaret had purchase and remodeled the building and provided an endowment. Margaret socialized among the wealthy, prominent families of Sacramento and San Francisco, attending teas and balls. The art gallery, one of the town's most beautiful buildings, was a social center where she hosted guests such as Civil War Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and playwright Oscar Wilde. Though of stocky build, she dressed elegantly, her dark hair swept up on her head revealing jeweled earrings. She retained a straightforward manner. Modest and unassuming, said The Bee. As a widow she traveled often, visiting her family around the country or fishing and hiking at her Lake Tahoe summmer home. When she returned to Sacramento, friends and neighbors came to the home on Third and O streets. She would stand on the porch to welcome them, her hands outstretched in cordial hospitality, recalled a family friend, Mary B. Lindley Briggs, in a 1946 newspaper interview. I never saw her without a kindly smile. The gallery was often open to the public, sometimes for a small charge to aid a worthy cause. In 1884, the California Museum Association held a fund- raising exhibit. The exhibit included several thousand pieces of art and historical and Victorian curios. It was a popular success. Shortly after, Margaret donated the gallery and the Crocker art collection to the city to be administered jointly by the city and the California Museum Association. For this and a lifetime of generous gifts, Sacramentans expressed their gratitude in an unprecedented outpouring. On May 6, 1885, banks, stores and schools closed for a holiday in honor Margaret Crocker. The Agricultural Pavilion in Capitol park was filled with floral tributes of all sizes and shapes. Miniature churches, temples and a fort large enough to contain several people lined the hall, as well as smaller floral pieces and individual bouquets. The tributes came from all over California and other states. Individuals, schools, churches, business, military and civic groups contributed to the Flower Festival in honor Margaret Crocker. That evening, music and the sweet scent of thousands of flowers filled the air as Sacramentans gathered in the hall. Seas of people, stirring gently as they moved around the brilliantly colored shores of flowers there was not less than 20,000 people in the building, reported one newspaper. Light colored dresses and hats lent brightness to the scene and half a hundred electric lights and gas chandeliers made the place as brilliant as sunlight. It was such an assemblage as was never seen in Sacramento or California. On the dias in the center of the pavilion sat Margaret Crocker, her face wreathed in smiles. A few years later she moved to New york to live near her surviving daughters and remained there until her death in 1901. , Lillieanne Chase is a Sacramento free-lance writer.