Aimée Crocker Gouraud

Aimée Isabella Crocker (December 5, 1864 – February 7, 1941) was an American mystic, bohemian, author, and member of the wealthy Crocker family. She was known for her cultural exploration of the Far East, for her extravagant parties in San Francisco, New York and Paris, and her collections of husbands and lovers, adopted children, Buddhas, pearls, tattoos, and snakes.

Early life and family

Crocker was born Amy Isabella Crocker on December 5, 1864, in Sacramento, California, to Judge Edwin B. Crocker and his second wife Margaret (née Rhodes). Crocker was the sixth child in a family of four girls, two boys, and a half sister. Three of the children died young. She was the younger sister of Jennie Louise Crocker Fassett, who was the wife of NY Congressman Jacob Sloat Fassett. Crocker's father was the chief legal counsel for the Central Pacific Railroad and was one of its principal investors along with Mark Hopkins, Collis Huntington, Leland Stanford and brother Charles Crocker, also known as The Big Four. Together they built the western portion of the world's first transcontinental railroad. Edwin served briefly as Chief Justice of California. Crocker's mother Margaret is also known for founding Sacramento's Crocker Art Museum, the longest continuously operating art museum in the West with, for a time, the largest private collection in the country.

Crocker was the first cousin of William Henry Crocker, humanitarian and president of three West Coast institutions: the Crocker Bank (once the fourteenth largest bank in the nation), the University of California Board of Regents, and the California Academy of Sciences. When much of the city of San Francisco was destroyed by the fire from the 1906 earthquake, William Crocker and his bank were major forces in financing reconstruction. William's wife Ethel was one of the leading California patrons of French Impressionist art.