Contra Costa County
Biographies
SVEN AUGUST CARLSON
The plant of the Stauffer Chemical Company at Stege is one of the oldest and largest of its kind on the Pacific coast. Of its instigation and rise to prominence in the commercial world of the west detailed account is given elsewhere in this work, the object of this memoir being to set forth the claims to worthiness of its superintendent and general manager, Sven August Carlson.
Mr. Carlson comes of a family which represents the best traits and ambitions of the people of Sweden. He was born on a small farm near Skillingaryd, Sweden, December 11, 1867, his parents, who had also four other sons and three daughters, being Isaac and Christine (Swenson) Carlson, natives of the same part of Sweden, the former born in 1827. Isaac Carlson came to the United States when Sven, his second youngest child, was three years old, reaching New York in the fall of 1870, and proceeding at once to the logging camps of northern Michigan. He was a natural mechanic and a good carpenter, and after the fire which devastated Chicago in 1871 went to the stricken city and aided in its upbuilding until 1873. Frugal and industrious, he returned to Sweden with what seemed a small fortune, and again located on his farm, where he still lives with his wife and three sons and one daughter, Sven August being the only representative of his family in America.
Sven August had the usual education accorded the country reared boy of Sweden, and his training on the home farm was thorough, admitting of little time for boyish recreations. He possessed the usual seriousness and power of application of his race, and did well whatever seemed to him worth doing at all. In 1888 he left home and sailed to America, coming to Riverside, Cal., where he secured employment on an orange ranch until February, 1890. He then located in San Francisco and entered the employ of the company of which he is now superintendent, working his way up from ordinary carpenter to engineer, and from engineer to foreman of the chemical department. His years of faithfulness and success in mastering the business were rewarded in July, 1896, when he was appointed superintendent of the Stege plant, with power to manage every department of this large and influential concern. All of the chemicals in general use are manufactured in the plant, and it is one of the best equipped and most capacious concerns in the world.
In San Francisco, in 1892, Mr. Carlson was united in marriage with Adelina Anderson, a native also of Sweden, and who is the devoted mother of three children: Carl Issac Theodore, Lilly Magnhilda, and Esther Adelina. Mr. Carlson owns his own home in Stege. He is a Republican in politics, and is a member of the Swedish Societies of both San Francisco and Oakland, and Ancient Order of United Workmen, being one of the most progressive and public spirited representatives of his nation on the coast.
Transcribed
9-14-16 Marilyn
R. Pankey.
ญญญญSource: History
of the State of California & Biographical Record of Coast Counties,
California by Prof. J. M. Guinn, A. M., Pages 1319-1320. The Chapman
Publishing Co., Chicago, 1904.
ฉ 2016 Marilyn R. Pankey.
Contra Costa County Biographies