Sacramento County
Biographies
EUGENE A. CROUCH
EUGENE A. CROUCH.--A representative business man of Northern California is Eugene A. Crouch, of Messrs. Waters, Crouch & Waters, dealers in real estate with offices at 620 J Street, Sacramento. He was born in Winnebago County, Illinois, on March 30, 1860, the son of Dr. W. T. and Mary E. (Crissman) Crouch, his father having been a physician, who enjoyed more than a local fame. He served as a true patriot in the Civil War, doing heroic service as a surgeon, and it was while his father was off at the front that our subject, one of twins, was born. Dr. Crouch died at the early age of thirty-eight; but his devoted wife survived, to breathe her last in Sacramento, in 1921, having been tenderly cared for by her son in her later years.
Eugene A. Crouch crossed the great plains with his father and mother in 1866, and distinctly remembers, young as he then was, many incidents of the adventurous journey, including more than one brush with hostile Indians. His parents stopped for a while at Virginia City, but came on to Sacramento in 1867, removing to Oakland, in 1876, in which town Eugene Crouch went to school. Having finished the high school courses, he engaged in railroading at Sacramento for seven years; and after that embarked, in 1884, or just before the big boom in the Southland, in the real estate business; and he is now one of the oldest in that field. He was also deputy county auditor, and deputy county recorder, and a school director or trustee. He resided in the home of Mrs. E. B. Crocker for nine years, and enjoyed enviable relations with the donor of the famous Crocker Library and Crocker Art Gallery, a gift to the City of Sacramento. Messrs. Waters, Crouch & Waters sell real estate and insurance, and successfully developed the Elmhurst Addition of ninety acres, near Sacramento.
In the year 1884, and at Sacramento, Mr. Crouch was married to Miss Sophie Stevenson, the daughter of Sophie Edwin, the California actress well-known in the history of the stage; and their union has been blessed with two children, Edwina, now Mrs. Thomas Simpson, of Burlingame and Vera, who has become Mrs. A. J. McNeil, of Alameda, affording in turn the joy of four grandchildren. Mr. Crouch, who is a Republican, but a good non-partisan booster for Sacramento, was the ninth exalted ruler of the Sacramento Lodge of Elks.
Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
Source: Reed, G. Walter,
History of Sacramento County, California With Biographical Sketches, Page 793. Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, CA.
1923.
© 2007 Jeanne Taylor.