Claus Spreckels, formally Adolph Claus J. Spreckels (July 9, 1828 – December 26, 1908), (his last name has also been spelled as Spreckles), was a major industrialist in Hawai'i during the kingdom, republican and territorial periods of the islands' history. He also involved himself in several California enterprises, most notably the company that bears his name, Spreckels Sugar Company.
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Spreckels was born in Lamstedt, Hanover, now a state of Germany. In 1846, he left his homeland to start a new life in the United States. In 1852 he married his childhood sweetheart, Anna Christina Mangels (1829-1910), who had immigrated to New York City with her brother three years earlier. They had thirteen children, five of whom lived to maturity: John Diedrich (1853-1926), Adolph Bernard (1857-1924), Claus August (1858-1946), Rudolph (1872-1958) and daughter, Emma C. (Spreckels) Watson Ferris Hutton.
The family first settled in South Carolina, where Spreckels opened a grocery store business. Within a short time they moved to New York City, then in 1856 relocated to San Francisco, where Spreckels began a brewery and made a fortune.
Spreckels used some of his wealth to purchase vast tracts of land in California and Hawaii to grow sugar beets and sugarcane. Spreckels entered the sugar business in the mid 1860s and came to dominate the Hawaiian sugar trade on the West Coast. His first refinery, built in 1867, was at Eighth and Brannan Streets in San Francisco, but by the late 1870s the Brannan Street facilities were running at capacity, so Spreckels chose a site in Potrero Point to open a larger sugar refinery with water access. He called his concerns the California Sugar Refinery. In the 1890s, he helped found the national sugar trust and renamed his property the Western Sugar Refinery and continued to increase his control over the Hawaiian sugar trade. This control over the industry was irksome to Hawaiian planters not directly affiliated with Spreckels and his associates. At the end of the 1890s, they attempted to break free. In 1905, the planters established a cooperative refinery in Crockett, California, the California and Hawaiian Sugar Company (C&H). Spreckels's dominance in sugar was broken, but the Western Sugar Refinery continued operation in San Francisco until 1951.
While in Hawaii, he purchased the Pacific Commercial Advertiser in 1880 and became a publisher. This paper later became known as the Honolulu Advertiser and, prior to its demise in 2010, was one of the largest newspapers in circulation in the United States. Spreckels' conservative, pro-monarchy slant caused him to fall from favor in the business community, and he eventually sold the newspaper. Claus Spreckels also lent his assistance to William Matson when he first founded Matson Navigation Company. Spreckels financed many of Matson's new ships including Matson’s first ship called Emma Claudina named for Spreckels’ daughter. Matson had been captain of a vessel, engaged chiefly in carrying coal to the Spreckels Sugar Refinery and later worked aboard the Spreckels family yacht.[1]
Spreckels was the President of the San Francisco and San Joaquin Valley Railway from 1895 until it was sold to the Santa Fe Railway in 1901. The railroad built a line that competed with the Southern Pacific through the San Joaquin Valley between Richmond and Bakersfield. The railroad was welcome competition for shippers who were strangled by Southern Pacific's monopoly on shipping rates in the valley. Today this route is BNSF's main route to Northern California.
Spreckels also built the 42-mile narrow gauge Pajaro Valley Consolidated Railroad in 1890 to ship his sugar beets from Spreckels (near Salinas) to Watsonville.
On July 9, 1893 Spreckels found a death threat graffitied on his house. He went into self-exile from Hawaii July 19 on the Australia vowing to “return to see grass growing in the streets of Honolulu.” Despite his vow he returned to Hawaii for one last time in 1905.
On Claus Spreckels's death, second son Adolph assumed the management of Spreckels Sugar Company.