Charles Crocker - Early Years

Early Years

Crocker was born in Troy, New York, the son of Eliza (née Wright) and Isaac Crocker, a modest family. They joined the nineteenth-century migration west and moved when he was 14 to Indiana, where they had a farm. Crocker soon became independent, working on several farms, a sawmill, and at an iron forge. At the age of 23, in 1845, he founded a small, independent iron forge of his own. He used money saved from his earnings to invest later in the new railroad business after moving to California, which had become a boom state since the Gold Rush.