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20-730: The businesses that would become the Desloge Consolidated Lead Company began around 1824, when Firmin Rene Desloge — founder of the Desloge Family in America — built a smelting furnace as an extension of his mercantile business in Potosi, Missouri . His son, Firmin V. Desloge , expanded mining operations and moved management to Bonne Terre, Missouri . The Desloge mining property was established by

40-687: A Desloge family descendant, Christopher Desloge, and capitalized by remainderment of trusts from Firmin Desloge as assets of the sale of Desloge Consolidated Lead Company. The name was changed in 2005 to Madaket Growth, LLC . Firmin Rene Desloge 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. He

60-593: A hospital to serve the miners and local community located in Desloge, Missouri on Fir Street. The lengthy Desloge family association with this hospital is the catalyst to Firmin V. Desloge II donating to fund Firmin Desloge Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri. To serve the Desloge and St. Joe mines, Firmin Desloge II built the first railroads to penetrate the disseminated lead field of St. Francois County :

80-475: 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. His son, Firmin Vincent Desloge , expanded the family mining and mercantile operations, becoming one of the richest men in

100-745: The Wilson–Gorman Tariff Act of 1894, which had lowered rates. The bill came into effect under William McKinley the first year that he was in office. The McKinley administration wanted slowly to bring back the protectionism that was proposed by the Tariff of 1890. Following the election of 1896 , McKinley followed through with his promises for protectionism. Congress imposed duties on wool and hides which had been duty-free since 1872. Rates were increased on woollens , linens , silks , china , and sugar (the tax rates for which doubled). The Dingley Tariff remained in effect for twelve years, making it

120-503: The Bogy Lead Mine Company and the St. Francois Mining Company. Along with his partners, he organized a new company called Desloge Consolidated Lead Company. The company sank mine shafts and built mills, smelting furnaces, and power stations. The Desloge Consolidated Lead Company's mine consisted of three shafts. Shaft No. 1 was the old Bogy shaft, and connected with shaft No. 2 by a tunnel. Two runs of ore had been drifted;

140-555: The Desloge Company paid one-third of the costs. Massive acreage of timber was acquired along with construction of substantial saw mills By 1901, mining operations at Desloge, Missouri included 3,640 acres The Revenue Act of 1894, also known as the Wilson-Gorman Tariff , lowered protective tariffs on lead (although it raised rates on sugar and other materials). The prospect of cheaper imported lead threatened

160-608: The Desloge Consolidated Lead Company moved its corporate offices from Desloge to the 1892 Rialto Building in downtown St. Louis. Despite the city's history as a fur-trading center, "more money passed through St. Louis as a result of the lead business in Missouri,” Robert E. McHenry wrote in his 2006 book Chat Dumps of The Missouri Lead Belt . In 1929, the company sold its plant to the St. Joe Lead Company for $ 18 million ($ 319,395,349 today) as 10,700,000 cash and $ 7,000,000 in bonds and other securities. A trade newspaper wrote, “With

180-867: The Desloge Railway, the Mississippi River and Bonne Terre Railway and the Valley Railroad. Desloge also helped develop the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railway (aka the Iron Mountain Railroad), which opened in 1874 from St. Louis to Texarkana, Arkansas. When the St. Joseph Lead Company built a 13.5-mile narrow-gauge railroad from its mines to the Iron Mountain tracks at Summit in Washington County,

200-484: The Desloge company and other southeast Missouri lead businesses, so Firmin Desloge II immediately went to Washington, D.C., to lobby for repeal. In the meantime, he spent part of his own fortune to continue operations, retained his employees, and stockpiled instead of sold his pig lead. The lead industry's lobbying efforts paid off in 1897, when the Dingley Act once again raised barriers to lead imports. Around 1916,

220-1005: 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 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. Dingley Act The Dingley Act of 1897 (ch. 11, 30  Stat.   151 , July 24, 1897), introduced by U.S. Representative Nelson Dingley Jr. , of Maine , raised tariffs in United States to counteract

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240-458: The absorption of the Desloge concern by the St. Joseph Lead Company, one of the oldest mining companies of the district goes out of existence as a company.” The Desloge Consolidated Lead Company, and specifically Firmin Rene Desloge and Firmin Desloge II, were described in 1932 as "the most distinguished of American mining engineers". The name Desloge Consolidated Lead Company was used for a company formed in 2004 as an investment holding company by

260-730: The acquisition of the Pratte family land, north of the St. Joe property. On June 5, 1874, a charter was granted to the Missouri Lead and Smelting Company, which was renamed the Desloge Lead Company on February 21, 1876. In 1876 and 1877, the company sank three shafts and built a new mill in Bonne Terre. A fire in March 1886 destroyed the concentrating mill plant and damaged the rest of the surface plant. The following year,

280-435: The bottom of the lower run was at a depth of about 320 feet, and the face of the drift is in places as much as 60 feet high. The upper run is between the depths of 190 and 270 feet. Shaft No. 3 was sunk to a depth of nearly 300'feet. Firmin Desloge remained on the board of directors of St. Joe Lead Company from the time of St. Joe's acquisition of Desloge Lead Company in Bonne Terre in 1886 until his death in 1929. Ultimately,

300-448: The company's lead operations required a massive real estate effort involving hundreds of land leases, purchases, options, rights of refusals, mineral rights, chattel mortgages, deed transfers, quit-claims, trust deeds, judgment sales, sheriff’s sales, bankruptcy sales, grants, bonds, notes, and various claims from area miners covering thousands of acres and hundreds of parcels of land. The Desloge Consolidated Lead Company built and operated

320-457: The company's remaining assets were sold to St. Joseph Lead Company , which made Firmin V. Desloge a trustee on its board, a post he would hold until his death. This merger helped the St. Joe company become the "greatest lead-mining and smelting company in the world. After the fire, Desloge and his family took an option on a piece of land owned by the Bogy family which was called "Mine-a-Joe", one of

340-675: The oldest mining properties in Missouri, and started another mining operation under the name Desloge Consolidated Lead Company. The new company cleared the land and built company houses for its workers just west of present-day Desloge, Missouri . In 1893, the Desloges opened a new mine in St. Francois County, Missouri , just north of the St. Joe Lead Company property in Bonne Terre, on a tract of land originally granted to Jean Bte. Pratte and designated as U. S. Survey No. 3099. The mill and smelting plant could produce 500 tons of lead per day. Firmin Desloge II expanded lead mining operations by buying

360-618: The world at his death in 1929. Around 1932, Desloge's estate was valued at more than $ 52 million ($ 1,161,248,780 today ). Desloge's great-grandfather include nobleman Gildas Alexiz Pitault; François Rozier , 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

380-467: 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 . 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

400-534: Was the progenitor of the Desloge Family in America , whose Missouri business interests included fur trading, hardware, clothing, lead mining, smelting and ore trading, and distilling. In 1806, Firmin's uncle Jean Ferdinand Rozier immigrated to the Louisiana Purchase territory of Missouri. He was accompanied by his business partner John James Audubon on a journey funded by Desloge's maternal grandfather, Claude Rozier. Firmin followed in 1823, and

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