Ethel Sperry Crocker
Ethel Sperry Crocker (1861–1934) was an American philanthropist and art patron of California.[1]
Biography
Ethel Willard Sperry was born in Stockton, California,[2] in 1861. Her parents were Simon Willard Sperry and Caroline Elizabeth (née Barker) Sperry, from Stockton, California, and sister to Elizabeth Helen Sperry (wife of Prince André Poniatowski).[3]
She married William Henry Crocker.[4]
Ethel and other family members owned the Sperry Flour Company, which was heavily invested in the World War I humanitarian effort by sending its flour across the ocean to aid famine-stricken citizens of Belgium.[5] Encouraged by Lou Henry Hoover, wife of the later president Herbert Hoover, Crocker became 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 her husband, William, chaired the men's committee of the Belgian Relief Fund in San Francisco.[6][7]
On another level, Crocker was the leading patron of French Impressionist art in California at that time. In the 1890s, Crocker and California Impressionist Lucy Bacon lent William Kingston Vickery, owner of the San Francisco art gallery Vickery, Atkins & Torrey, a number of French Impressionist paintings. Vickery then supervised a series of these loan exhibitions in San Francisco and introduced Impressionism to California in the form of paintings by Claude Monet, Eugène Boudin, Paul Cézanne, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Edgar Degas. Crocker also sponsored the studies of the Zoellner Quartet with César Thomson in Belgium.[8]
She was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution.[2]
Ethel Sperry Crocker died in 1934.[4]
References
- ^ "Crocker, Ethel". The San Mateo County Historical Association - Online Collections Database. Retrieved 2024-01-21.
- ^ a b Daughters of the American Revolution (1904). Lineage Book of the Charter Members of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Daughters of the American Revolution. p. 205. Retrieved 17 May 2024.
This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
- ^ "Ethel Willard Crocker". geni_family_tree. 1861. Retrieved 2024-01-21.
- ^ a b "William H. Crocker, Ethel Crocker, & Helen Crocker Russell - Cypress Lawn Heritage Museum". cypresslawnheritagefoundation.org. 4 September 2020. Retrieved 17 May 2024.
- ^ "Sperry Flour Mill". retroramblings.nsgw.org. 2021-02-02. Retrieved 2024-01-21.
- ^ Slepchenkova, Angelina (Summer 2017). "The Life and Times of the American Journalist Arno Dosch Fleurot (1879-1951): Defining American Liberalism in World War One Era Through the Lense of Foreign Reporting. (thesis)". Fullerton: California State University.
- ^ "Sperry Mills – American Indian – California – Decorated Flour Sacks from WW I" (in Dutch and English). 2022-12-31. Retrieved 2024-01-21.
- ^ Cariaga, Daniel, "Not Taking It with You: A Tale of Two Estates", Los Angeles Times, December 22, 1985, accessed April 2012.
