H.M. Newhall & Company was founded as an auction house in San Francisco in
1852, when H.M. Newhall bought out two partners who had originally hired him
(Hall & Martin). The firm became very prosperous in the 1850s-1870s by buying
up bulk cargoes of ships as they docked in San Francisco, then selling off the goods
piece by piece in their auction house.
When H.M. Newhall died in 1882, two of his sons carried on the trade which
became an import-export firm over time. By the 1930s, H.M.'s grandsons George
Newhall and Almer M. Newhall were running the business as partners. In the
period 1920-1950, the firm specialized in a few things. Among them were
spices imported from southeast Asia, and fish and abalone, both
California-grown and from Mexico, that were exported to the Orient. (All cans
of a now-defunct brand called Cal-Mex Abalone, shipped to Japan as a
delicacy, were stamped as being marketed by H.M. Newhall & Co.)
In 1965, the firm fell on hard times, as every manufacturer started doing its
own importing and exporting. H.M. Newhall & Company was purchased by Walter
Scott Newhall, Jr., one of H.M.'s great-grandsons (born 1942). But as the
demand for spices and exotic fish dwindled, the company no longer had a
market. I believe that it closed down for good in about 1969.
[This] sardine label [appears to be] from sometime in the
1920s-1950s. H.M. Newhall & Co. was simply the exporting agent who contracted
with the supplier in California and marketed them to foreign buyers, mostly
in Japan and China.
