According to a letter written to Liliʻuokalani dated to June 22, 1894, in which she declined an arranged marriage, she mentioned that she had rejected a proposal by an "enormously rich German Count". She was connected in the press to two other suitors in 1898: Captain Putnam Bradlee Strong, an American officer en route to fight in the Spanish–American War in Manilla and son of New York City Mayor William Lafayette Strong, and Andrew Adams, a New England-born journalist for "The Pacific Commercial Advertiser" whom her father favored. In 1895, "The Evening Republican" reported a rumor that Kaʻiulani was to marry Rudolph Spreckels, the son of sugar magnate Claus Spreckels. A posthumous report in "The Butte Daily Post", after Kaʻiulani's death, connected her to James G. Blaine, Jr, son of former United States Secretary of State James G. Blaine.