OBITUARY.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2386, 30 December 1908, Page 5

OBITUARY.

CLAUS SPRECKELS—MULTIMILLIONAIRE.

United Press Association. Copyright

NEW YORK, Dec. 28

Obituary: Claus of the Oceanic Steamship Company, San Francisco. It is supposed that he leftten million pounds sterling.

[The deceased millionaire was a native of Germany, having been born at Lamstedt, Hanover, in 1828. He went to the United States in 1846, where he made his money in the sugar refinery industry. Employed first at Charleston, South Carolina, he went to San Francisco in 1856, where he conducted a store and later entered into the brewery business. In 1863 he established the Bay Sugar Refinery, procuring raw material from Hawaii,, where he secured sugar properties, and he invented a new refining process. Spreckels also owned a beet sugar farm of 30,000 acres, and factories at "Watsonville, Salinas, California, and was a large owner in the Oceanic Steamship Company, now plying between San Francisco and Honolulu. His son, John Diedricli. founder of the J. D. Spreckels and Bros. Co., shipping and commission agents and owners of the large fleet of tugs and vessels trading Avith Hawaii. This son is also president of the Oceanic Steampship Co., and proprietor of the San Francisco “Morning Call.” The Spreckels Oceanic Steamship Co. Avas well-known in Noav Zealand, having been engaged in the San Francisco mail contract, which Avas performed in so unsatisfactory a style that the subsidy given by the New Zealand Government Avas AvithdraAvn.]