John Hager was born on March 12, 1818, on a farm near Morristown in New Jersey, United States. Both his father, Lawrence Hager, and his mother, Mary Sharpenstein, were German Protestants whose forebears had emigrated to New Jersey early in the eighteenth century.
John Sharpenstein Hager graduated from the College of New Jersey (later Princeton) in 1836, studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1840.
In June of 1849 John Sharpenstein Hager appeared in San Francisco, and for some time thereafter worked as a merchant and a miner in the northern mines. Returning thence to San Francisco early in 1852, he resumed the practice of law and entered politics, serving in the state Senate in 1853 and 1854. The following year he was elected district judge and held this office until 1861, winning for himself a reputation for fairness and integrity that shielded him in days of bitter criticism. After a period of retirement, during which time he traveled through parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, he was elected again in 1865 to the state Senate. Within a month of taking office he emphasized his sympathy with the administration by introducing resolutions in praise of the position of President Johnson on Reconstruction. He remained in this office for six years.
For a long period, Hager was chairman of the judiciary committee. He was also chairman of a joint committee to consider bills relating to a state university, and in 1869 he was made a regent of the new institution.
Hager was interested for a time in the organization of the California, Atlantic & Pacific Railway, and in 1872 he stated that he favored giving the Central Pacific a competitor. One of his earliest declarations in the state Senate had been in opposition to monopoly, in particular to railway monopoly. In 1873 he was elected as an Anti-Monopoly Democrat to fill an unexpired term in the United States Senate, where he interested himself in railway grants, Indian affairs, and especially in land titles and the importation of Chinese labor. His anti-monopoly convictions led him into frequent clashes with those speaking for larger railway grants, though he was insistent upon large federal appropriations for public works in San Diego harbor. In the tariff discussions he attempted to provide a protection for the California farmer. At the close of the term of office in 1875 he received a complimentary vote for governor in the Democratic state convention.
Hager was chairman of the resolutions committee of the state convention of 1876 and went as a delegate to the national convention. When President Cleveland came to office in 1885 he made Hager collector of the port of San Francisco. His work as collector of the port gave general satisfaction except for a flurry over the treatment of the Chinese ambassador and his suite in 1886. He died in San Francisco and was buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery, St. Louis, Missuori.
Hager was a man of “character, capacity and cultivation. ”
Upon a visit in St. Louis in the autumn of 1872, John Sharpenstein Hager married Elizabeth (Lucas) Hicks, the daughter of James H. Lucas and widow of Silas Hicks.
