Firmin V. Desloge

Firmin V. Desloge (born Aug. 30, 1843, in Potosi, Missouri; died St. Louis, December 18, 1929) was an American lead mining pioneer in the disseminated lead fields of the Southeast Missouri Lead District and member of the Desloge family in America.[1]

In 1822, Desloge's father, Firmin Rene Desloge, came to America from France to work with his uncle Jean Ferdinand Rozier from Ste. Genevieve, Missouri.[2][3]

Born in 1843, the young Desloge received his early education in the public schools at Potosi, where the family businesses included fur trading, distilling, and mining. He then attended St. Louis University and later the commercial school of Bryant & Stratton in St. Louis, Missouri. He was trained to mercantile pursuits, beginning at an early age as a clerk for the firm of John B. Valle & Co. of St. Louis.

In 1867, he began mining operations near Potosi. When lead-mining was in its infancy in St. Francois County, Missouri, he prospected lands in that county adjacent to those of the St. Joseph Lead Company, and finally purchased and erected smelting works for the corporation known as the Desloge Lead Company. Desloge built a connection with the St. Joseph Lead Company—the first railroad to penetrate the disseminated lead field of St. Francois County. In 1887, the two companies merged to create what was probably the era's greatest lead-mining and smelting company.[4]

In 1889, he acquired from the Bogy Lead Mining Company one of the oldest mining properties in Missouri, and after demonstrating that there were valuable deposits of disseminated lead on these lands, folded them into the new Desloge Consolidated Lead Company. The town built to support the mines is now known as Desloge, Missouri.[5][6][7] The use of the new diamond drill[8] and the 1893 arrival of a branch from the Mississippi River & Bonne Terre Railroad allowed the already-successful lead mining operations to expand.[9][10]

A grandson of one of Desloge's friends and business colleagues, Harry Cantwell, Sr, said, "They say that grandfather and Desloge (Firmin Desloge) were riding in a surrey one day trying to decide where to sink a shaft. Desloge spit off one side of the surrey and said there was where they would sink the shaft. Grandfather didn't agree with the location of the spit and split with Desloge to form his own company," Cantwell said. Desloge soon sank a shaft and struck the same main vein and deposits as that of those he had worked at Bonne Terre before the fire.[11][12]

Marriage

On October 24, 1877, Firmin Desloge was married at Lexington, Mo. to Lydia Holden Davis, born June 24, 1855 in Lexington, Mo., the daughter of Rebecca (Nave) Davis and Confederate Col. William Joseph Davis. Col. Joseph Davis was the quartermaster to General Sterling Price of the US Confereracy during the U S Civil War.

From 1870 to 1872, Desloge served as treasurer of Washington County, Missouri. He served as a public school director there and in St. Francois County.[13]

Philanthropy

In 1930, a $1 million ($14,117,530 today[14]) bequest from Desloge's estate built Firmin Desloge Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri.[15][16] Desloge’s wife Lydia gave another $100,000 to build the adjacent Desloge Chapel.[17]

Death

Firmin V Desloge died December 18, 1929. Around 1932, at the time of his estate's settlement, Desloge's estate was worth more than $52 million ($898,839,024 today[14]).[18] This placed Firmin V Desloge as one of the wealthiest men in the world, alongside W. K. Vanderbilt ($52 million) and A. W. Mellon ($50 million), but only half as wealthy as the Astors ($100 million).[19]

References

  1. ↑ The Book of St. Louisians: A Biographical Dictionary of Leading Living Men of the City of St. Louis, by John W. Leonard, The St. Louis Republic, St. Louis, MO 1906, page 154. Copy of book at Harvard College Library, Charles Elliot Perkins Memorial Collection
  2. ↑ Huger, Lucie Furstenberg. The Desloge Family in America. St. Louis: Nordman Printing Co., 1959.
  3. ↑ Douglass, Robert Sidney (1912). History of Southeast Missouri: A Narrative Account of Its Historical Progress, Its People and Its Principal Interests, Volume 1. Chicago and New York: Lewis Publishing Company. p. 557. Note: the cited paragraph is primarily about Firmin V. Desloge, but contains a relevant sentence about his father, Firmin Rene.
  4. ↑ Desloge Consolidated Lead Company records at Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, MO
  5. ↑ Desloge Consolidated Lead Company records at Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, MO
  6. ↑ History of St. Joe Lead Company http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~mostfran/mine_history/stjoe_history.htm
  7. ↑ HISTORY OF THE LEAD BELT OF ST. FRANCOIS COUNTY MISSOURI By A. J. Norwine (1924)
  8. ↑ Stevens, Walter B. St. Louis The Fourth City 1764-1911. 2 vols. St. Louis-Chicago: S. J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1909 and 1911.
  9. ↑ Sullivan, John J., History of St. Joe and Desloge Railway and Missouri River and Bonne Terre Railroad, handwritten, Railroads Collection, Desloge Railway, Missouri Historical Society archives
  10. ↑ Missouri Short Line Railroad
  11. ↑ http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~mostfran/towns/cantwell_harry.htm
  12. ↑ http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/MOSTFRAN/2002-09/1033360033
  13. ↑ Encyclopedia of the history of Missouri: a compendium of history edited by Howard Louis Conard
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Consumer Price Index (estimate) 1800–2014. Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Retrieved February 27, 2014.
  15. ↑ the original, fully executed bequest documents in the possession of the Missouri Historical Society Archives, St. Louis, MO, Joseph Desloge Collection
  16. ↑ http://www.slu.edu/sluhistory/desloge.html
  17. ↑ For comparison, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. acquired the whole Grand Teton mountain range (Teton Range) of 35,000 acres in the 1920s for about $1.4 million.
  18. ↑ Probated will of Lydia Desloge, source Farmington (Missouri) Press, December 1932
  19. ↑ List of the Richest Men in the World, New York Times, May 20, 1923, accessed by ProQuest Historical Newspapers, via St. Louis County Library.