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 controlls 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 cross 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, book-binding 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 and Present of Alameda County California, Vol. II
Published in Chicago by The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company
1914
Pages 277-279
Transcribed by Linda Jackson 6/11/2008
Alameda County Biographies ~ Archive Biography Index ~ Archive Index
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