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known among genealogists as the Fifth Prince Poniatowski. A descendent of Polish
royalty whose family had long made their home in France, “André” was born in
Paris in 1864. The families were close, and the children of André and Helen and
Will and Ethel, first cousins, were regularly shuttled between the family homes in
Hillsborough and Paris; they grew up completely bilingual.
Ethel’s husband William H. Crocker was born in Sacramento, the youngest
son of Charles Crocker (1822-1888) and Mary Ann Deming Crocker. Charles
Crocker, along with Mark Hopkins, Collis Huntington and Leland Stanford,
comprised “The Big Four” of the Central Pacific Railroad. Charles Crocker served
as construction supervisor of the company, which by the time the railway project
was finished in 1869, employed a workforce of fifteen thousand laborers, 98% of
whom were Chinese.
Reasoning that they had built the Great Wall of China, not to mention the
fact they were willing to work for a dollar a day (as opposed to Irish laborers who
commanded $3 per day), Charlie Crocker sent recruits to mainland China where
they readily obtained workers eager to escape famine in their homeland.
Will Crocker’s uncle, Judge Edwin Bryant Crocker (1818-1875), who served as
legal counsel to the Central Pacific and is often counted as one of “The Big Five,”
said: “I wish to call to your minds that the early completion of this railroad we
have built has been in large measure due to that poor, despised class of laborers
called the Chinese, to the fidelity and industry they have shown.”
While the prospect of steady construction work drew Chinese by the scores to
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Above: Built on either side of Buena Vista Creek, the pump houses were located just
above a small dam and reservoir, one of three water reservoirs that were created on
the property. The one remaining pump house can still be seen on the golf course from
Forge Road (photo courtesy Gledhill Library, Santa Barbara Historical Museum).
A handwritten note on the back of this historic but undated
photograph says: “Fukuhara Store, importer-exporter of food,
Japan-California Exchange Co” (photo courtesy Gledhill Library,
Santa Barbara Historical Museum).