Hyde-Shaw Company

Summary

Business	Cannery
Main Location	San Jose
Active	1907-1915
Successors	Richardson and Robbins, Shaw Family Cannery

Fruit cannery run by Elton R. Shaw, supposedly known for their fancy fruit packed in glass jars and high-quality jams. The "Hyde" in the name was "W.H. Hyde Jr." according to the 1911 San Jose City Directory. Hyde lived in Berkeley at the time. A 1907 ad advertises "tomatoes, cherries, peaches, peeled apricots, spiced prunellas, and spiced peaches... put up in quart jars by the Hyde-Shaw Co.". The company also made peanut butter.

The May 30, 1910 Hawaiian Star noted that Elton Shaw had been working with the Hawaiian Pineapple Company, and had formerly been a sales manager for the "Economy Jar", and had just acquired the entire property and business of the Hyde-Shaw Company of San Jose, "one of the very few concerns in the United States that have made a success of packing fruits in glass." The Hawaiian Pineapple Company and its shareholders were planning to watch the business with Shaw, and hoped to can pineapple juice at a later date. The May 27, 1910 issue of the Hawaiian Star stresses the purchase of the company as a site to can pineapple juice.

The cannery was sold in 1915 to Richardson and Robbins from Delaware according to the March 13, 1915 California Fruit News. Shaw was "well known in California", and would be taking responsibility for both the company's Dover, Delaware plant as well as the California plant. Richardson and Robbins planned to expand the plant significantly, but ended up selling it back to Shaw in April 1918.

Edith Daley visited the plant in the August 5, 1919 San Jose Evening News. She notes that Richardson and Robbins sold the plant back to Shaw in April 1918, and the plant was then known as the Shaw Family Cannery.

Locations

Location	Years	Address	Details
San Jose	1907, 1910, 1915	4th and Patterson	Southeast corner.

Details

1909 San Jose City Directory. "Hyde" was William Hershel Hyde Jr., unrelated, as far as I know, to the Campbell Hydes. His father, William Hershel Hyde Sr. was a former 49er, house mover, and contractor who appears to have been pretty successful in his day. There's evidence of Junior living in San Francisco through 1903, then he appears working for Hyde-Shaw, and eventually ends up in Berkeley in 1910 living in pretty nice houses and labelling his occupation as "capitalist".