Firmin René Desloge (17 February 1803, in Nantes, France – 20 July 1856, in Potosi, Missouri) was a U.S. businessman who founded lead mines and other mercantile businesses. Note: the cited paragraph is primarily about Firmin V. Desloge, but contains a relevant sentence about his father, Firmin Rene. He was the progenitor of the

Desloge Family in America The Desloge family, () centered mostly in Missouri and especially at St. Louis, rose to wealth through international commerce, sugar refining, oil drilling, fur trading, mineral mining, saw milling, manufacturing, railroads, real estate, and riv ...

, whose

Missouri Missouri (''see #Etymology and pronunciation, pronunciation'') is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it border ...

business interests included fur trading, hardware, clothing, lead mining, smelting and ore trading, and distilling.

Career

In 1806, Firmin's uncle

Jean Ferdinand Rozier Jean Ferdinand Rozier (November 9, 1777 – January 1, 1864) was a French-American businessman whose partners included naturalist John James Audubon as immigrants to the United States and later, lead mogul Firmin Rene Desloge. He was born in ...

immigrated to the

Louisiana Purchase The Louisiana Purchase () was the acquisition of the Louisiana (New France), territory of Louisiana by the United States from the French First Republic in 1803. This consisted of most of the land in the Mississippi River#Watershed, Mississipp ...

territory of Missouri. He was accompanied by his business partner

John James Audubon John James Audubon (born Jean-Jacques Rabin, April 26, 1785 – January 27, 1851) was a French-American Autodidacticism, self-trained artist, natural history, naturalist, and ornithology, ornithologist. His combined interests in art and ornitho ...

on a journey funded by Desloge's maternal grandfather, Claude Rozier. Firmin followed in 1823, and was introduced by his uncle and Audubon to the businesses of fur trading and mercantile interests along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and lead smelting and mining in

Potosi, Missouri Potosi is a city and the county seat of Washington County, Missouri, United States. Potosi is southwest of St. Louis. The population was 2,538 as of the 2020 census. Located in the Lead Belt, the city was founded in 1763 by French colonists as ...

.Huger, Lucie Furstenberg. The Desloge Family in America. St. Louis: Nordman Printing Co., 195

/ref> St. Genevieve, a Mississippi River town populated largely by French immigrants and their descendants, was a hub for trading with Indians and new white arrivals to the frontier. Desloge began to focus on lead mining. He had a nose for lead veins and geology, and began with open-ground diggings, some left open by Native Americans and frustrated miners. He built a smelting furnace around 1824 as an extension of his Potosi mercantile business. Desloge became a naturalized citizen of Missouri in 1828. Miss F

His son, Firmin V. Desloge, Firmin Vincent Desloge, expanded the family mining and mercantile operations, becoming one of the richest men in the world at his death in 1929. Around 1932, Desloge's estate was valued at more than $52 million ($ today).

Ancestry

Desloge's great-grandfather include nobleman Gildas Alexiz Pitault;

François Rozier Jean-Baptiste François Rozier (23 January 1734 in Saint-Nizier parish, Lyon – 28/29 September 1793 in Lyon) was a French botanist and agronomist. Life Rozier was the son of Antoine Rozier (a squire, king's counselor and provincial controll ...

, a lawyer in the Parliament of Paris, Bailiff of the Forte', Sancerre, Ingra and other jurisdictions of the Bailiwick of Orleans; and Michel Rozier, an officer of the Mint and Marshall of the Minters of the Orléans Mint. His grandfathers included François Claude Rozier, Mayor of Kernegan from August 1789 and Judge of the Tribunal of Commerce from Jan. 23, 1793. Desloge's father, Joseph Giles Desloge, was appointed Mayor of

Morlaix Morlaix (; , ) is a commune in the Finistère department of Brittany in northwestern France. It is a sub-prefecture of the department. History The Battle of Morlaix, part of the Hundred Years' War, was fought near the town on 30 Septembe ...

by the French First Empire. His uncle (by marriage to his father's sister Marie-Marguerite) was Jean-Baptiste Sollier de la Quillerie, a member of the French king's gendarme.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Desloge, Firmin Rene 1803 births 1856 deaths American mining businesspeople People from Potosi, Missouri Desloge family French emigrants to the United States 19th-century French businesspeople 19th-century American businesspeople