William Chapman Ralston

Ever since I first walked into the Palace Hotel, I felt a strange connection to William Ralston, a man who died over 100 years before I was born. I can’t explain it, but I feel the need to revive his legacy, and share the impact he made on the world, and more specifically, on San Francisco, at such an interesting time in history.

And, before I dive in, I want to let you know that everything you read on this site is written by me, Morgan, by hand. I’m not using AI to write any of this. Instead, I’m doing things the old fashioned way, reading about Ralston anywhere and everywhere I can, to hopefully share a deeper look into the life of William Ralston, or as he was more often known as, Billy.

Rather than go on, page after page about Ralston, I wanted to put together a short(ish) summary of his life, written in a more accessible way so anyone can get a good overview of his life. Then, if you find this interesting, you’ll find more and more blog posts popping up on here sharing more about specific events or periods that I think are worth doing a deeper dive into.

So with that, let’s dive in, here’s the TL;DR on the one and only, William Chapman Ralston.

Ralston was born on January 12th, 1826 in Wellsville, Ohio. His Dad was a boat builder named Robert Ralston III, and his Mom was named Mary Wilcoxen Chapman. And yeah, while I mentioned above that his nickname was Billy, that was actually his nickname as an adult, as a kid, he often went by Chap.

Now most people don’t have a ton of context for Ohio in the mid-1800’s so I’ll share two quick sentences about it. At this time in American history, the way goods were sent around the country was by boat, and the steamboats really upped the ante for the kind of money that could be generated with these shipping businesses. Wellsville, Ohio, where Ralston was born, was located on the Northern banks of the Ohio river which transformed from a tiny little settlement to a major steamboat hub and commercial port.

To jump ahead a bit, okay a lot, Vanderbilt made his fortune in the steamboat industry, and Ralston and Vanderbilt would cross paths in some very pivotal ways in Ralston’s life. So the fact that Ralston was born in Wellsville, a steamboat hub, to a Father, who built boats, was a key reason for the life he ended up leading, and trajectory he found himself on from an early age.

Okay, but back to young Chap Ralston. Unfortunately, at the age of 9, Ralston’s Mom died, and his Dad remarried. Not surprisingly, this had a major impact on Ralston.

Growing up around the steamboat industry, and in the bustling steamboat hub of Wellsville, it’s not a big shocker that once he was old enough, Ralston got into the steamboat industry. He started as a clerk, which meant he mostly kept track of records like cargo logs, helped travelers, recorded fares, and all the other “admin” work that was involved in running steamboats.

Ralston had a lot of really interesting adventures during his early years as a clerk, and while I won’t go into detail on them here, I will definitely write a blog post or two about some of them. As you can imagine, this was a pretty wild time to be working in the steamboat space, it was crazy competitive, and moving fast, which meant things didn’t always go as planned.

As Ralston became more and more successful in the shipping industry, he started to make business trips to New York City. On one trip, while at a party hosted by a very successful steamboat and railroad mogul Charles Morgan, he met a woman named Louisa Thorne, who also happened to be the niece of Cornelius Vanderbilt, yup, the Vanderbilt. The two fell in love and were engaged to be married, even though Louisa’s family wasn’t a big fan of the idea since Ralston wasn’t of remotely the same pedigree.

But that didn’t stop them. Billy and Louisa were deeply in love. They got engaged, but before getting married, Louisa’s awesome Uncle, Vanderbilt, took her and a bunch of other family members to Europe on his fancy new luxury ship. The plan was, after they got back from the trip, her and Ralston would get married. You can imagine how excited young Billy was, still in his 20’s, getting some real success in life, and totally in love. Louisa gets back from the trip, and is incredibly sick, and dies.

Before she died, Louisa gave Ralston a miniature portrait of herself, painted on ivory. Ralston would carry this with him in his breast pocket for the rest of his life.

Billy was industrious from a young age, he wanted to go bigger, and in the 1850’s, going bigger for him meant getting involved with banking and shipping in Panama. This in many ways was Vanderbilt’s territory, and where Vanderbilt really created the beginning of his empire. And yes, you can expect me to write quite a few blog posts about Panama because mid-1800’s Panama was a totally fascinating place.

Essentially, people wanted to get across the US, and well, taking a wagon kinda sucked, taking a boat to Panama, crossing by land, and then taking a boat across to the West, could be a much better experience. And Ralston connected up with some very rich and powerful people in Panama, and it was both what he learned through this experience, and the connections he made, that set him up for the extraordinary life he ended up living from there forward.

After Panama Ralston moved to San Francisco. He is 28 years old, and is now a pretty connected dude in the banking world. So much so that he soon has his name on a bank called Garrison, Morgan, Fretz, and Ralston. And yes, both Garrison and Fretz were pretty big deal people at the time, so if you had your name on a bank with them, safe to say, you would be too!

In San Francisco Ralston met Elizabeth “Lizzie” Fry, whose Uncle, Colonel John D. Fry, was a business associate of Ralston’s. One somewhat random fact that I’ve always found interesting is that Ralston has somehow always had romantic interests that were nieces of rich and powerful people in the shipping industry. Which does make sense because at that time, that’s who he was hobnobbing with, and it was the kind of parties these people had that was where young eligible bachelors would meet their mates.

When Ralston proposed to Lizzie, he was upfront about his neverending grief for Louisa. He even told her that he could never love another woman as much as he loved Louisa. Pretty powerful if you think about it, and you can imagine how much this loss impacted Ralston, it really was his one true love, and something he knew he would never get back.

Billy and Lizzie got married on May 20th, 1858 at the Calvary Church on Bush Street in San Francisco. The two had a totally over-the-top honeymoon in Yosemite, and actually brought 14 guests with them on the excursion. This is widely recognized by historians as the very first time anyone had their honeymoon in Yosemite, which also makes sense since it was pretty complicated to do something like this in 1858!?!

While there are no photos from the honeymoon, one of the guests, Sarah Haight kept a journal and documented the adventure. You can definitely bet that I will be writing a blog post about this in great detail.

Okay, but back from the honeymoon and in San Francisco, things are declining from the Gold Rush, and there are fears that the city will fall into dark times, if it technically hasn’t already. But then, the Comstock Lode is discovered in Nevada, a vast riches of Silver, and yup, Ralston invests heavily. By 1864 Ralston was at the top of the stack for most of the bonanza mines, and is now a very wealthy man.

Ralston opens the Bank of California in 1864, it’s a tough time for San Francisco, but Ralston so firmly believes in the potential of the city, he wants to invest in it and do everything he can to turn it into one of the greatest cities in the world. In 1869 Ralston financed the California Theater on Bush Street, and he continues to invest in the city, doing everything he can to make it the incredible city he thinks San Francisco can become.

At this point in time Ralston is rich, like really rich. He built Ralston Hall in Belmont, California, a massive 55,000 square foot, 80+ room mansion, with an elaborate ballroom and opera box modeled after the Palais Garnier. Safe to say, if you want to go to a really cool party in the late 1860’s, Ralston’s house was the place to be.

But this was a hard time to run a bank. There was a lot of concern that San Francisco was going to slowly die as a city, the gold rush was over, Silver was all the rage, but that was in Nevada. Lucky for the city, Ralston, and a number of other wealthy and influential people in San Francisco, invested in the Silver mines in Nevada, and then took that money to build up San Francisco into the great city by the bay.

These were some very challenging times for San Francisco, the Gold Rush was over and bank runs were frequent and Ralston had to go through some pretty harrowing times to save his bank when this happened. Then in 1872 Ralston was one of a number of San Francisco financiers who was duped by what is now known as The Great Diamond Hoax. You can bet I’ll have a blog post on this, but safe to say, this was a big hit to Ralston both financially and reputationally in many ways.

Still, this didn’t stop Ralston from his vision of transforming San Francisco into a truly world class city. And to do this, he thought that San Francisco should have the most incredible hotel in the world, a hotel that brings the most rich and powerful people in the world to San Francisco. What would you call a hotel this amazing? The Palace of course!

Ralston partnered with William Sharon, one of his main business partners in the Silver Mining operations, and the two put together the budget and plans for the most elaborate and magnificent hotel in the world. But building the hotel turns out to be even more expensive than they thought, and Ralston in particular was stretched very thin.

Then, at the worst possible time, there was a bank run on the Bank of California, $1.4M paid out in one day. Ralston resigns in the morning, but pledges to borrow money and get his business back on its feet and finish the Palace Hotel. That day, he goes for an afternoon swim in the bay, a regular thing for Ralston, and dies, at the age of 49.

They did conduct an autopsy of Ralston and determined the cause of death to be an apoplectic stroke, not drowning, as so many sources falsely claim. And yes, there is a lot of mystery surrounding his death, with many thinking it was just too strange to have it happen that very day. But given the autopsy results, and everything that had just happened, I think it’s not unreasonable to think that Ralston was very stressed, incredibly upset, and probably swam harder than usual, pushed himself too hard, and sadly, lost his life.

On September 8th, 1875 there was a 50,000 person funeral procession for Ralston on the streets of San Francisco, one of the biggest funeral processions in San Francisco history. A month later, the Palace Hotel opened, and yes, it became one of the most famous hotels in the world. Foreign dignitaries and the who’s who of just about any major country you can think of, came to The Palace, to see, and be seen.

Ralston’s vision both for the hotel, and the city of San Francisco, were realized. He was a driving force in making the city what it is today, but he died without ever knowing it, and today, most people who live and work in San Francisco, have no idea who Ralston is.

I want to change that. Like I said in the beginning, I feel a special connection to Ralston, and have felt it ever since the first time I set foot in the Palace Hotel. I can’t quite explain it, but that’s okay, I just know that it feels right for me to do what I can to bring Ralston’s life and stories back to life however I can. For some reason, I feel like I owe him that.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you come back to read the blog posts I share over time. Ralston has so many incredible stories to share from his life, I really can’t wait to write them.