Claus Spreckels

Claus Spreckels (July 9, 1828 – December 26, 1908) was a German-born American industrialist in California and Hawaii, during the kingdom and republican periods of the islands' history. He founded or was involved in several enterprises, most notably the company that bears his name, Spreckels Sugar Company.

Spreckels was born in Lamstedt, in the Kingdom of Hanover, a constituent kingdom of the German Confederation. Spreckels was the eldest of six children of the farmer John Diederich Spreckels (1802–1873) and his wife Gesche Baak (1804–1875), a family that had occupied a homestead in Lamstedt for many generations. He grew up in Lamstedt and attended elementary school. After the bad harvests of 1845 and 1846, the resulting inflation and hunger crisis reached its peak in 1847; Spreckels emigrated to the United States in 1848 at the age of 19 to start a new life, with only one German thaler in his pocket, which upon arrival in the US, he exchanged for 75 cents. (Equivalent to about $30 in 2023 dollars.) Spreckels settled in Charleston, South Carolina, working as a grocery clerk, taking over the grocery after a year and a half by buying it on credit from the retiring shop owner.

In 1852, he married his childhood sweetheart, Anna Christina Mangels (September 4, 1830 in Ankelohe [de], Kingdom of Hanover, German Confederation – February 15, 1910, San Francisco, California), who had immigrated to New York City with her brother three years earlier. They had 13 children, five of whom lived to maturity: sons John Diedrich (1853–1926), Adolph Bernard (1857–1924), Claus August ("Gus"; 1858–1946), and Rudolph (1872–1958); and daughter, Emma Claudina (1870–1924), who married Watson Ferris Hutton. The remaining children died in childhood, in several cases, within a few months of each other, either from diphtheria or from other unspecified pandemic diseases, possibly cholera.

In 1854, Claus and his family left Charleston for New York City, where he operated a grocery with his brother-in-law, Claus Mangels. In 1855, he was visited by his younger brother Bernhard, who operated a grocery store in San Francisco and was en route back to their home town of Lamstedt to marry. Bernhard regaled Claus with stories about the city and its booming post-Gold Rush economy. Already disliking New York City and sensing an opportunity, Spreckels soon sold his share of the grocery business there to his brother-in-law and bought out Bernhard's San Francisco grocery, relocating there with his family in 1856.

After about a year of operating a successful grocery in San Francisco, he again grew restless with the lack of growth opportunity in that line of business. Noting the generally poor quality of San Francisco "quick-brewed beer" of that time, he saw brewing as an industry with strong growth potential. He partnered again with Claus Mangels and with a younger brother, Peter Spreckels, to start a brewery and sold off his grocery business soon after. Spreckels and his partners opened the Albany Brewery on Everett St near Fourth Street (now Yerba Buena Gardens) in 1857, and soon afterward opened a saloon, the Albany Malt House, across the street. The brewery's first product was a cream ale, but later added a German-style lager and a steam beer, which, by some accounts, introduced steam beer to California.

Brewing proved a sometimes difficult line of work. Beermaking required constant monitoring for temperature, something that might be ignored when a shift change happened, requiring Spreckels to come in late at night and monitor the process himself. He later stated that he often slept no more than four hours per day for months on end. The brewery and saloon were successful and became the second largest brewery in San Francisco, but never managed to surpass competitor John Wieland's Philadelphia Brewery for the top position. Spreckels himself never made more than a modest income after splitting the earnings with his partners.

Spreckels saloon was located in the same area as George Gordon's San Francisco and Pacific Sugar Refinery and frequented by some of its workmen. Spreckels had overheard a conversation between these workmen discussing the wastefulness of the sugar refining process at their factory, which allowed large amounts of sugar liquor to overflow and run into the sewers. Spreckels sensed that if the refinery could still turn a profit while wasting so much of its product, then the profit potential in sugar must be enormous. An additional factor was the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, which cut off the North from Southern sugar supplies, causing demand to outstrip supply.

In 1863, Spreckels decided to go into the sugar refining business, leaving management of the brewery in the hands of his partners. In order to familiarize himself with the process of sugar refining, he relocated to New York City (then the center of the American sugar industry) for several months, taking an entry-level night shift job at the Charles W. Durant sugar refinery and learning all aspects of the process. During the day, he toured other sugar refineries, asking detailed questions about their process. Spreckels had his eldest son John accompany him on this extended trip and included him on factory tours so that he would learn the business as well. While in New York City, Spreckels took advantage of the opportunity to purchase a full set of sugar refining equipment from the recently bankrupted United States Refinery, having it shipped around Cape Horn to San Francisco.