TWHP


John Parrott, 1811-1884   

A giant in the early affairs of the Pacific Coast and San Francisco, John Parrott left few footprints. Sam Brannan may have been the first to make a million in California, but Parrott might well have arrived with such sums. Born to an old Virginia family which moved to Tennessee, Parrott grew up in a wilderness frontier but still managed to get a good education. After his older brother William distiguished himself in the War of 1812 and thereby developed a promising career in government, the elder Parrott moved to Mazatlan, Mexico, taking a post as American Consul. John Parrott joined him in 1829, working in his mercantile company and succeeding to the government office in 1837 when William moved on. Maintaining the trade established, Parrott enriched himself through a combination of business wit and intimate knowledge of the vagaries of Mexican policies on the West Coast, where trade was tightly restricted. In 1842, he almost precipitated war between the United States and Mexico when he passed on reports to Commodore Thomas Jones that a state of war already existed; the commander of the American fleet seized Monterey, raised the flag, and quickly relented when informed of his error. Moving to San Francisco in 1850, Parrott opened shop as a banker--Parrott & Company--and established a reputation for conservative practices in an era that scoffed at them given the available riches. He constructed one of San Francisco's first stone buildings in 1852--he had it imported from China--and it withstood a massive nitroglycerine explosion as well as the earthquake of 1906. It was a fitting metaphor for Parrott's bank. It survived the first California bank crash of 1855 while more venerable institutions collapsed, and he wouldn't loan money without hard collateral no matter what interest was offered; his only lapse seems to have been over a shipment of spoiled ham. He loaned money to Agoston Haraszthy's Buena Vista winery and replaced the founder when his management seemed inept, and he was an investor in the Alaska Commercial Company, which reaped millions. He was, perhaps, the richest man in San Francisco by 1870, with assets totalling $4 million; William Ralston, the West's most renowned financial genius, claimed a mere $1.5 million at the time. He foiled Ralston's plans to extend Montgomery Street to China Basin from downtown, and he objected to the financial frenzies of speculation that plagued the City, obliterating savings and destroying neighborhoods. He retired and died, his affairs, as always, in impeccable order.


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