Alameda County Biographies

WILLIAM BLANCHARD BANCROFT

Transcribed by Kathy Sedler

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	William Blanchard Bancroft is a man of initiative, enterprise and discrimination and 
in the course of a long and successful business career has been identified with a number of 
important corporate interests in various parts of the United States and London and was for 
many years one of the greatest individual forces in the upbuilding and development of the 
Bancroft Publishing Company of San Francisco. For a number of years past he has been identified 
with the real-estate business in Oakland, and he controls today a large and representative 
patronage. He was born in Grand Prairie, Dunklin county, Missouri, September 27, 1847, and is 
a son of Curtis and Louisa J. (Lamb) Bancroft, the former a native of Grandville, Ohio, and 
the latter of Kentucky. The parents crossed the plains to California in 1850 and arrived in 
Hangtown, now Placerville. The father afterward engaged in mining on Rich Bar, Plumas county, 
and later built and operated the National Hotel at Bidwell's Bar.
	W. B. Bancroft came by the Nicaraguan route to California in August, 1854, being at 
that time seven years of age. He made the journey up the coast to San Francisco on the historic 
old steamer Brother Jonathan and from San Francisco pushed on to Bidwell's Bar, where he 
acquired his preliminary education in private schools and subscription schools. He later 
attended the Oak Grove Institute of Alameda, being but twelve years of age, the youngest 
boarding pupil, and he also studied in the public schools of San Francisco. In 1861 he entered 
the employ of H. H. Bancroft & Company, book­sellers and stationers of San Francisco, and for 
twenty-nine years thereafter did able work in the service of this corporation. Starting in as 
an errand boy he rose through every department, learning the business in principle and detail. 
He spent some time as a bookkeeper and was later, at eighteen years of age, sent to New York, 
where he took complete charge of the company's wholesale department. He subsequently returned 
to California and traveled all over the Pacific coast in the interests of the company, which 
numbered him among its most trusted and able representatives. The period of his connection with 
H. H. Bancroft & Company was not continuous, for in August, 1869, Mr. Bancroft went to San Diego, 
purchased three lots and built a small store, engaging in the book and stationery business for 
himself. When he returned to San Francisco he again joined the Bancroft Company, becoming manager 
of the printing, bookbinding and publishing department, a position which offered adequate scope 
to his initiative power and executive ability. Under his administration the business increased 
from sixty-five thousand dollars a year to half a million in 1886 when the building was destroyed 
by fire.
	Mr. Bancroft later went to New York, where he became associated with the American Trading 
Company and was sent by them to London as resident agent with the full unrestricted power of 
attorney to reorganize their London office. He accomplished this work so successfully that he 
purchased for them a business worth twelve and one-half million dollars. After a number of years 
of unusually able and discriminating service Mr. Bancroft resigned from the employ of the American 
Trading Company and again entered the publishing business. He compiled in London a book called 
"Bancroft's Americans in London," which was made a standard volume and published every year for 
six years. At the request of his brother, H. P. Bancroft, Mr. Bancroft of this review returned to 
California and became associated in the real-estate business in Oakland with the Breed & Bancroft 
Company. At the end of six years he returned to London but after one year came again to Oakland, 
resuming his real-estate operations independently.
	Mr. Bancroft is a member of the London-American Society and well known in club circles of 
the world's metropolis, holding membership in the Queen's Athletic Club and the Balham 
Constitutional Club of London and also the London branch of the United States Navy League, of 
which he was one of the incorporators. He is prominent in the affairs of the Athenian Club of 
Oakland. He is a man of broad culture, progressive views and high ideals and is well and favorably 
known in the social life of the community. In business circles he occupies a place of prominence 
and distinction, being widely recognized as a man of tried integrity and worth.

Past & Present of Alameda County, California – Vol II, S. J. Clarke Publ. Co., 1914, p.    277