The Camron Family
In Residence 1876-1877
Left: Alice Marsh Camron, right: William Walker Camron. From the Inventory of Photographs from the Marsh Family Papers, Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley.
Handwriting right: “Dr. Marsh’s Daughter, Alice.” Handwriting left: “Will Camron, her husband – for a time! He left us.”
Alice Marsh was the daughter of Dr. John and Abigail Marsh, a wealthy pioneer family in Contra Costa County. Dr. John Marsh, a Harvard graduate, began his medical career in the Pueblo de Los Angeles in 1836 where he gained wealth and notoriety as a physician. He came north in 1837 and purchased the 17,000 acre Rancho Los Meganos (sand dunes in Spanish) near what is now Brentwood, California for $500.00. Marsh married Abigail Tuck in 1851 and their daughter was born in 1852. Abigail Marsh died in 1855, when Alice was still a toddler, after a long unspecified illness. Her father was murdered the following year following a disagreement with three Californian vaqueros. Alice and her paternal half-brother Charles inherited the vast Marsh estate and she grew into an attractive, wealthy, and well-educated young woman.
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1876-1877: Alice (Marsh), William, Amy, and Gracie Camron
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1877-1881: David and Matilda Hewes and Franklina (Gray), William, and Lanier Bartlett
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1882-1903: Josiah, Helen, and Joe Stanford
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1903-1907: Captain John Tenant Wright Jr., Trella (Beck) Wright
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1907-1965
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1965-Present
The Camron Family, pictured soon after moving into their new home in 1876. The photograph shows Alice (Marsh) Camron, William Walker Camron, Amy Camron and Gracie Camron. Along the sidelines are members of the household staff. Camron-Stanford House Archives.
Amy Camron, daughter of William and Alice, and her dog “precious Toodles” at their Santa Barbara home. From the Inventory of Photographs from the Marsh Family Papers, Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley.
At 19 years old, Alice married Deputy Sheriff William Walker Camron in 1871. Camron’s family had moved to California in 1849 and he, like Alice, had been orphaned as a young boy. Following their marriage, the couple built a house in Martinez where their daughter, Amy, was born. After the birth of their second daughter in 1875, William and Alice moved to Oakland. Alice purchased the large Italianate Victorian house built by Samuel Merritt now known as the Camron-Stanford House. That same year, William used his wife’s fortune to invest in land on the eastern slope of the Berkeley hills. The tract was named Orinda Park in honor of Alice’s favorite poet Katherine Fowler Philips, whose pen name was Orinda. Camron became the vice-president of the Oakland Bank of Savings but his main business consisted of buying and selling real estate with Alice’s money.
Active in the local Republican Party, Camron was appointed to a vacancy on the Oakland City Council on September 3, 1877. Personal tragedy struck just six weeks later when Gracie Camron, the couple’s youngest daughter, died four days after her second birthday. Devastated, Alice and William rented their home to David Hewes while the entire family embarked on a five-month tour to Europe.
In 1880, William Camron was elected to the California State Assembly but two years later was defeated in the race for State Senator. While in the state legislature, Camron had a reputation as a fiscal conservative. On the home front the situation was somewhat different. A series of failed business endeavors combined with Camron’s unsteady political career led the family to sell their lakeside property in 1882.
Alice divorced William in 1891 citing desertion. With her fortune gone, Alice and her daughter Amy left Oakland for bustling downtown San Francisco. By 1910, Alice and Amy had moved to Santa Barbara where they each lived, unmarried, until their respective deaths. The two are both buried in Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland where they lie alongside Gracie Camron and Alice’s parents Abby and Dr. John Marsh. William Camron is buried in the Alhambra Cemetery in Martinez, CA laid to rest with his second wife, Viola Babcock Camron.