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The Rise and Fall of the Sugar King: A History of Williamsburg Brooklyn 1844- 1909
The history of Williamsburg, Brooklyn and the rise of the American sugar industry are so intertwined that it is impossible to separate them. The Havemeyer family built the world’s largest sugar refinery that would be renamed Domino, but also constructed a sugar empire that made Henry Havemeyer one of the richest and most powerful men in America. This book chronicles Henry Havemeyer’s ascent and reign as the “Sugar King” of the United States. It is a tale of greed, crime, wealth, power and corruption, but it is also the story of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The Rise and Fall of the Sugar King, based on extensive historical research, recounts the lives of a half dozen Williamsburg residents during the years from 1844 to 1909.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
352 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 21, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 23, 2024
What a story of intrigue, corruption, and the rise of Brooklyn. The author Geoffrey Cobb did a great job dramatizing this story. The author did a tremendous amount of research. The book was so good, I’m starting Geoffrey Cobb’s book about Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
Warning: The book is formatted terribly. Sometimes you lose half a sentence.
Warning: The book is formatted terribly. Sometimes you lose half a sentence.
July 4, 2019
Geoffrey Cobb's independently-produced history of Williamburg focuses on the history of the Havemeyers and the Domino Sugar Company. The book covers Williamsburg, a neighborhood in Brooklyn, approximately during the lifetime of H. O. Havemeyer, the ruthless executive who led the Havemeyer family sugar company to one of the nations foremost industrial powers. Havemeyer was born in 1847 and died in 1907.
The Havemeyer Brothers sugar company was an important local producer of sugar when the Havemeyer brothers founded the company in 1807 and ran it for twenty years. Their sons, Frederick Christian (son of founder Frederick Havemeyer) and William (son of the other founder William Havemeyer) led the company to its first amazing expansion during America's first Industrial Revolution. The cousins presided over a company whose production exploded as the sugar company took advantage of the vacuum pan, and also improved refining by introducing the bone black to filter impurities that converted the final product from brown sugar into the tastier refined white sugar that is a standard ingredient in many deserts.
What the book does not explore is the changed employee-employer relationship during this period. It is a good bet that the Havemeyer brothers knew all of their employees personally when they ran the company from 1807-1828. During the expansion presided over by the Hayemeyer cousins, the company became too big for the owners to personally know every employee. In fact the company became too small for the two cousins, and Frederick Havemeyer assumed sole control of the company after a dispute. When Frederick sought additional capital to expand, he reached out to a brother-in-law, James Elder, for the infusion.
Public policy had also helped the new Havemeyer and Elder concern grow its business. Each soldier from the north in the Civil War was allowed 15 pounds of sugar a month as a ration. One thing that can be said about the Havemeyers: they were not shoddy millionaires who sold substandard merchandise to the government. They made their money producing a quality product at low cost. That would not always be the case, as the Havemeyers would benefit from a protective tariff that raised the price of imported sugar in the United States.
After the Civil War, Frederick Havemeyer had groomed his two sons to take over the business. He actually had a third son, George, who was supposed to be the heir apparent, but George died in an accident at the refinery. The other two sons lived privileged lives where they traveled to Europe, in part to learn advances in the refining of sugar from European companies, and also to gain cultural refinement. When the two brothers took over the company from their father, they were far removed from any day-to-day interaction with their employees. They had no sense of how their shift in company policy made the job more dangerous for their workers, or just how difficult it was for workers to provide for their families on the salaries that they made. The Havemeyers made seasonal layoffs with no regard for the impact to the lives of the workers who lost their employ, for they knew none of the employees personally.
In fact, new shift in immigration patterns had the Hayemeyer company employing southern European immigrants who could not speak to the Havemeyer brothers even if they had the opportunity to meet them. This distance between corporate management and their front-line staff characterized the Secord Industrial Revolution, and brought rise to many of the social problems that the Progressives tried to tackle.
On January 8, 1882, the Havemeyer business had their biggest business setback. A fire had burned down the Havemeyer & Elder refining factory, leaving the brothers with smoldering, barren land and little else. Their one thousand two hundred employees were laid off. Not only did the Havemeyer family vow to rebuild, but they used state of the art technology to make the plant an even more efficient, low-cost producer.
The new technology also made the workplace a less-inviting place of employment. Temperatures inside the building soared and the heat depleted the workers. The company served beer at cost to replenish the fluids and salt of their workers, which further eroded the worker's sense of safety on the job by impairing their judgement. The beer also turned providers into alcoholics who were not as responsible supporting their families.
By now, these workers were viewed as adversaries by the Havemeyers. The sugar company hired people who could not speak English so they could not divulge any information about what occurred inside company property to the outside world. Most of these employees were Poles, Slavs, Bohemians, and other Southern Europeans who were also viewed suspiciously as having communist learnings. Any threat to organize was treated by the company as treasonous. The local police force did enough to prevent strikers from damaging company property, and the Havemeyers had enough stockpiled sugar and cash reserves to wait out the employees in work stoppages.
A reader can weave his own story of the First and Second Industrial Revolutions with the narrative of the Havemeyer Sugar Company from this book. Other parts of the narrative apart from the history of the sugar company play into some offshoots of these topics. For instance, Williamsburg was the nexus of machine politics that characterized the era. Hugh McLaughlin ran Brooklyn politics and his top lieutenant was Patrick McCarran. Both were beholden to the sugar trust. McCarren took over for McLaughlin and presided over Brooklyn politics in the early 1900s. The Williamsburg Bridge, competed in 1903, was one of his McCarran's major accomplishments.
A few other topics form the narrative. The Williamsburg area was the home base of one of the nation's top amateur baseball clubs, the Brooklyn Eckfords, in the late 1850s and early 1860s. Sam Collyer and Jack McAuliffe were top 19th century boxers based in Williamsburg. Lowell Palmer built a successful cooperage business in Williamsburg, and the Havemeyers were his best customers. Havemeyer even invited Palmer to be part of his Sugar Trust, but even this long-time relationship ended in a dispute.
With a story as well-researched as this, it is disappointing that there are no footnotes included. Historians may neglect this book for that reason although the author did do his research. Claire Minton of Cat's Cradle might offer some psychological reason for the book lacking an index--I can only say that I would have liked to have an index accompany a historical narrative. The book could also use a map of Williamsburg, although I suppose any reader could find a good one by downloading a Brooklyn Borough Bus map from the MTA web site, which has an enlarged section devoted to the streets of Williamsburg.
There are numerous errata in the narrative that will have others questioning the veracity of the rest of the story. There are words capitalized that should not be, like Eighteen on page 127 and Sprague Star pitcher on page 90, while the other way around the name short is not capitalized on page 144. Skillman is spelled Stillman on Page 244, mayor Seth Low lost an h, and largesse is misspelled on page 58. The author selected archaic or arcane versions of words like re-boiled and naïve (with an umlaut) which could have been avoided by using Google's ngram viewer. Actually, the book uses a lot of words like re-commence and re-occurrence that are not recommended by the AP Stylebook or the Chicago Manual of Style. The book also has an odd presentation of $100 by putting the dollar sign after the number, and two odd uses of an mdash by printing an ndash and adding a space to the right and left of the dash--though convention mandates otherwise. It could be that I'm just picky because I transcribe books for Project Gutenberg and tend to notice these things. Lord knows, there's probably some errata in this review, but I'm not a professional author who is trying to sell what I've written.
Finally, a lot of potential readers will look at the title of the book, "The Rise and Fall of the Sugar King," and notice the ubiquitous yellow and white cover with blue print and some red, and expect the book to be entirely a history of the Domino Sugar Company, which is what the Havemeyer firm eventually became known as. The subtitle, A History of Williamsburg 1844-1909, is more descriptive of the content.
I had really nice time listening to the author talk about the Sugar King at Domino Park, the former site of the Domino Sugar refinery in Williamsburg that has been converted into a riverfront city park. He is a good storyteller who can maintain your interest.
The Havemeyer Brothers sugar company was an important local producer of sugar when the Havemeyer brothers founded the company in 1807 and ran it for twenty years. Their sons, Frederick Christian (son of founder Frederick Havemeyer) and William (son of the other founder William Havemeyer) led the company to its first amazing expansion during America's first Industrial Revolution. The cousins presided over a company whose production exploded as the sugar company took advantage of the vacuum pan, and also improved refining by introducing the bone black to filter impurities that converted the final product from brown sugar into the tastier refined white sugar that is a standard ingredient in many deserts.
What the book does not explore is the changed employee-employer relationship during this period. It is a good bet that the Havemeyer brothers knew all of their employees personally when they ran the company from 1807-1828. During the expansion presided over by the Hayemeyer cousins, the company became too big for the owners to personally know every employee. In fact the company became too small for the two cousins, and Frederick Havemeyer assumed sole control of the company after a dispute. When Frederick sought additional capital to expand, he reached out to a brother-in-law, James Elder, for the infusion.
Public policy had also helped the new Havemeyer and Elder concern grow its business. Each soldier from the north in the Civil War was allowed 15 pounds of sugar a month as a ration. One thing that can be said about the Havemeyers: they were not shoddy millionaires who sold substandard merchandise to the government. They made their money producing a quality product at low cost. That would not always be the case, as the Havemeyers would benefit from a protective tariff that raised the price of imported sugar in the United States.
After the Civil War, Frederick Havemeyer had groomed his two sons to take over the business. He actually had a third son, George, who was supposed to be the heir apparent, but George died in an accident at the refinery. The other two sons lived privileged lives where they traveled to Europe, in part to learn advances in the refining of sugar from European companies, and also to gain cultural refinement. When the two brothers took over the company from their father, they were far removed from any day-to-day interaction with their employees. They had no sense of how their shift in company policy made the job more dangerous for their workers, or just how difficult it was for workers to provide for their families on the salaries that they made. The Havemeyers made seasonal layoffs with no regard for the impact to the lives of the workers who lost their employ, for they knew none of the employees personally.
In fact, new shift in immigration patterns had the Hayemeyer company employing southern European immigrants who could not speak to the Havemeyer brothers even if they had the opportunity to meet them. This distance between corporate management and their front-line staff characterized the Secord Industrial Revolution, and brought rise to many of the social problems that the Progressives tried to tackle.
On January 8, 1882, the Havemeyer business had their biggest business setback. A fire had burned down the Havemeyer & Elder refining factory, leaving the brothers with smoldering, barren land and little else. Their one thousand two hundred employees were laid off. Not only did the Havemeyer family vow to rebuild, but they used state of the art technology to make the plant an even more efficient, low-cost producer.
The new technology also made the workplace a less-inviting place of employment. Temperatures inside the building soared and the heat depleted the workers. The company served beer at cost to replenish the fluids and salt of their workers, which further eroded the worker's sense of safety on the job by impairing their judgement. The beer also turned providers into alcoholics who were not as responsible supporting their families.
By now, these workers were viewed as adversaries by the Havemeyers. The sugar company hired people who could not speak English so they could not divulge any information about what occurred inside company property to the outside world. Most of these employees were Poles, Slavs, Bohemians, and other Southern Europeans who were also viewed suspiciously as having communist learnings. Any threat to organize was treated by the company as treasonous. The local police force did enough to prevent strikers from damaging company property, and the Havemeyers had enough stockpiled sugar and cash reserves to wait out the employees in work stoppages.
A reader can weave his own story of the First and Second Industrial Revolutions with the narrative of the Havemeyer Sugar Company from this book. Other parts of the narrative apart from the history of the sugar company play into some offshoots of these topics. For instance, Williamsburg was the nexus of machine politics that characterized the era. Hugh McLaughlin ran Brooklyn politics and his top lieutenant was Patrick McCarran. Both were beholden to the sugar trust. McCarren took over for McLaughlin and presided over Brooklyn politics in the early 1900s. The Williamsburg Bridge, competed in 1903, was one of his McCarran's major accomplishments.
A few other topics form the narrative. The Williamsburg area was the home base of one of the nation's top amateur baseball clubs, the Brooklyn Eckfords, in the late 1850s and early 1860s. Sam Collyer and Jack McAuliffe were top 19th century boxers based in Williamsburg. Lowell Palmer built a successful cooperage business in Williamsburg, and the Havemeyers were his best customers. Havemeyer even invited Palmer to be part of his Sugar Trust, but even this long-time relationship ended in a dispute.
With a story as well-researched as this, it is disappointing that there are no footnotes included. Historians may neglect this book for that reason although the author did do his research. Claire Minton of Cat's Cradle might offer some psychological reason for the book lacking an index--I can only say that I would have liked to have an index accompany a historical narrative. The book could also use a map of Williamsburg, although I suppose any reader could find a good one by downloading a Brooklyn Borough Bus map from the MTA web site, which has an enlarged section devoted to the streets of Williamsburg.
There are numerous errata in the narrative that will have others questioning the veracity of the rest of the story. There are words capitalized that should not be, like Eighteen on page 127 and Sprague Star pitcher on page 90, while the other way around the name short is not capitalized on page 144. Skillman is spelled Stillman on Page 244, mayor Seth Low lost an h, and largesse is misspelled on page 58. The author selected archaic or arcane versions of words like re-boiled and naïve (with an umlaut) which could have been avoided by using Google's ngram viewer. Actually, the book uses a lot of words like re-commence and re-occurrence that are not recommended by the AP Stylebook or the Chicago Manual of Style. The book also has an odd presentation of $100 by putting the dollar sign after the number, and two odd uses of an mdash by printing an ndash and adding a space to the right and left of the dash--though convention mandates otherwise. It could be that I'm just picky because I transcribe books for Project Gutenberg and tend to notice these things. Lord knows, there's probably some errata in this review, but I'm not a professional author who is trying to sell what I've written.
Finally, a lot of potential readers will look at the title of the book, "The Rise and Fall of the Sugar King," and notice the ubiquitous yellow and white cover with blue print and some red, and expect the book to be entirely a history of the Domino Sugar Company, which is what the Havemeyer firm eventually became known as. The subtitle, A History of Williamsburg 1844-1909, is more descriptive of the content.
I had really nice time listening to the author talk about the Sugar King at Domino Park, the former site of the Domino Sugar refinery in Williamsburg that has been converted into a riverfront city park. He is a good storyteller who can maintain your interest.
December 9, 2017
The Best North Brooklyn History Yet
The third of Mr Cobb’s north Brooklyn histories is by far his most ambitious and well executed. It was a great pleasure to be entertainingly guided through the incredible history of the Sugar Trust, and in particular to learn about the ruthless, corrupt and damned Havemeyer family behind it. There are also fascinating stories of the rise of Senator Patrick McCarren, the Nativist riots, Willis Hodges and more. Much more than a local history, this book is an excellent narrative on a period in American History when the accumulation of personal wealth for a ruthless few first began to have no bounds. It raises serious questions about justice, what it is to live in a capitalist society, and how exploitation and successful business are frequent, uncomfortable bedfellows.
The third of Mr Cobb’s north Brooklyn histories is by far his most ambitious and well executed. It was a great pleasure to be entertainingly guided through the incredible history of the Sugar Trust, and in particular to learn about the ruthless, corrupt and damned Havemeyer family behind it. There are also fascinating stories of the rise of Senator Patrick McCarren, the Nativist riots, Willis Hodges and more. Much more than a local history, this book is an excellent narrative on a period in American History when the accumulation of personal wealth for a ruthless few first began to have no bounds. It raises serious questions about justice, what it is to live in a capitalist society, and how exploitation and successful business are frequent, uncomfortable bedfellows.
December 20, 2017
Geoff Cobb’s Rise and Fall of the Sugar King is an important contribution to the local history of Williamsburg. In it, Cobb traces the great political challenges that faced New York City during the second half of the nineteenth century, especially during the rise of the sugar refining industry in Williamsburg. Through the use of case-studies focused on influential figures ranging from immigrant priests to hereditary sugar kings, Cobb focuses on the rise of the sugar industry between 1845 and 1909. While his study is confined to Williamsburg with occasional forays into nearby Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Philadelphia, the way in which he describes the interactions between wealth and poverty as well as Americans and immigrants is an important contribution to nineteenth century American urban, economic, and cultural history.
One of the most enticing stories is that of Grahams Polley, a man who has a fascinating rags-to-riches story that Cobb brings to light. Grahams Polley rises from relative poverty to enormous wealth through loyalty and work. Polley’s greatest days coincided with a Williamsburg that grew from village to town to city, accompanied by the rise of sugar refining in New York. Cobb is laudatory in his language to describe the philanthropist, at times calling him “the greatest,” “extraordinarily kind,” and “unpretentious.” It is in stories like that of Polley, that the reader wants more, perhaps an entire volume on Polley and his contribution to Williamsburg.
Still, the account of Polley makes readers wonder about those who did not attain wealth. Throughout the Rise and Fall of the Sugar King, Cobb tells of a number of risings, conflicts, and struggles mostly in the abstract. If Polley is indeed such an outlier, what does he really tell us about the struggles that people faced during the rise and fall of big sugar?
Additionally, the section on Henry Havemeyer shows the enormous wealth of the sugar industry in Williamsburg in the late nineteenth century. Here, Cobb describes clearly and concisely the enormous growth in Williamsburg fuelled by the sweet refined commodity that attracted immigrants from Europe. Here is where Cobb’s work really shines, and hopefully it will be used throughout Williamsburg to justify and defend the maintenance of local historical landmarks.
Like his previous efforts, Cobb’s book is easy to read and helpful to a variety of people. One can only imagine a world where people such as Cobb take up the task of preserving history in a way that gives new life to old buildings and rapidly changing cities. Rise and Fall of the Sugar King is an important work that will entertain those looking for local history and launch historians into deeper studies. Cobb catalogs numerous interesting stories that will surely garner more attention from historians in the future.
One of the most enticing stories is that of Grahams Polley, a man who has a fascinating rags-to-riches story that Cobb brings to light. Grahams Polley rises from relative poverty to enormous wealth through loyalty and work. Polley’s greatest days coincided with a Williamsburg that grew from village to town to city, accompanied by the rise of sugar refining in New York. Cobb is laudatory in his language to describe the philanthropist, at times calling him “the greatest,” “extraordinarily kind,” and “unpretentious.” It is in stories like that of Polley, that the reader wants more, perhaps an entire volume on Polley and his contribution to Williamsburg.
Still, the account of Polley makes readers wonder about those who did not attain wealth. Throughout the Rise and Fall of the Sugar King, Cobb tells of a number of risings, conflicts, and struggles mostly in the abstract. If Polley is indeed such an outlier, what does he really tell us about the struggles that people faced during the rise and fall of big sugar?
Additionally, the section on Henry Havemeyer shows the enormous wealth of the sugar industry in Williamsburg in the late nineteenth century. Here, Cobb describes clearly and concisely the enormous growth in Williamsburg fuelled by the sweet refined commodity that attracted immigrants from Europe. Here is where Cobb’s work really shines, and hopefully it will be used throughout Williamsburg to justify and defend the maintenance of local historical landmarks.
Like his previous efforts, Cobb’s book is easy to read and helpful to a variety of people. One can only imagine a world where people such as Cobb take up the task of preserving history in a way that gives new life to old buildings and rapidly changing cities. Rise and Fall of the Sugar King is an important work that will entertain those looking for local history and launch historians into deeper studies. Cobb catalogs numerous interesting stories that will surely garner more attention from historians in the future.
March 4, 2018
Today the Williamsburg borough of Brooklyn is known for its trendy cafes, chic boutiques and top rated restaurants, but few people know about the history that is carefully and masterfully chronicled in Geoff Cobb's, The Rise and Fall of the Sugar King. Many have rallied against the changes affecting the borough's real estate landscape, especially those projected for the Domino Factory, but few know the rich and sensational history that altered the borough during Henry Havemeyer's reign as the area's Sugar King. An engrossing and entertaining read.
January 12, 2023
A freestanding chimney that dwarfed the church steeples that once formed the area’s skylines.
February 14, 2018
I just moved to Williamsburg in October 2016 and had been looking for books about the neighborhood's history. Aside from A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, this is my favorite. Mr. Cobb has written a few books about the areas history, and he teaches history at a high school. This book is primarily about the Havemayer family , but has a lot of other great characters, a priest who builds the first catholic church in the predominantly protestant area, a famous boxer, a senator et. al. The time period includes the civil war so we get to see how that affected the characters and the development of Williamsburg. It is written in a straight-forward style packed with wonderful details. There is also a good selection of photographs and drawings illustrating the history. This is exactly what I wanted in a local history.
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