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 riverboats. The family has funded hospitals and donated large tracts of land for public parks and conservation.
History
The family's progenitor was Firmin René Desloge, a descendant of French nobility who emigrated to Missouri in 1823 to join his uncle Jean Ferdinand Rozier who had arrived in Missouri in 1810 with Rozier's business partner John James Audubon.
The family's businesses in lead and mercantile in Missouri date from around 1824, when Firmin Rene Desloge built his own smelting furnace as an extension of his Potosi, Missouri, mercantile business. They grew to include the Missouri Lead Mining and Smelting Company in 1874 and the Desloge Lead Company in 1876, inclusively one of the largest and oldest lead mining companies in America.
The family moved to St. Louis in 1861, at the outset of the American Civil War, after various attacks at Potosi, Bonne Terre and upon the family lead mining works by both Federal and Confederate armies who sought lead for weapons.
Firmin Rene Desloge's son, Firmin V. Desloge II, expanded mining operations and expanded management to Bonne Terre, Missouri; a charter was requested and granted to the Missouri Lead and Smelting Company on June 5, 1874. The corporate name was later changed to "The Desloge Lead Company" on February 21, 1876. Three shafts were sunk during 1876 and 1877 and a new mill was built. In 1886, a fire destroyed the concentrating mill plant and damaged the rest of surface plant of the Desloge Lead Company. Rather than rebuild, Desloge II sold the firm to the St. Joseph Lead Company. In 1887, the land was cleared and company houses for his staff were constructed at the location which became known as Deslogetown: present-day Desloge, Missouri. Desloge II then founded a new company, the Desloge Consolidated Lead Company.
To serve his mines, Desloge II also built the first railroads to penetrate the disseminated lead field of St. Francois County, Missouri: the Desloge Railway, the Mississippi River and Bonne Terre Railway and then the Valley Railroad. Desloge II was also involved with the development of the Iron Mountain and Southern Railroad (aka the Iron Mountain Railroad) from St. Louis, Missouri, to Texarkana, Arkansas. The St. Joseph Lead Company built a 13.5-mile narrow gauge railroad from the mines to a junction with the Iron Mountain Railroad at Summit in Washington County. St. Joe paid two-thirds of the construction costs; the Desloge Company the rest.
Around 1916, the Desloge Consolidated Lead Company moved its corporate offices from Desloge, Missouri, to the Rialto Building in downtown St. Louis. While "St. Louis, with its French ancestry, has been noted as a fur capital, more money passed through St. Louis as a result of the lead business in Missouri than did because of the fur business", wrote Doe Run Company CEO Jeffry Zelm. The oldest St. Louis-based lead family is Desloge.
Firmin V Desloge, IV owned and was President of Smokey Oil Company.
In 1922, Desloge II's grandson Louis Desloge (from Jules Desloge) founded Watlow — the name alludes to low-watt heaters to replace steam heat — to manufacture electric heating elements for the shoe industry. In 2011, Watlow, still a Desloge family business, employed 2,000 employees in 13 factories in the United States, Mexico, Europe and Asia; had sales offices in 16 countries; and distributed globally. In 2021, the family sold a majority stake in Watlow to Tinicum LP, a private-equity firm.
Desloge II's son, Joseph Desloge, designed an industry-specialty electric fuse that would "kill the arc" and founded Killark Electric in 1913. Joseph Desloge also owned Minerva Oil (a confusing misnomer as it was primarily mining zinc and fluorspar); founded Louisiana Manufacturing Company and Atlas Manufacturing Company; and pursued fluorspar mining in southeastern Illinois. Joseph Desloge's son Joseph Jr. owned uranium mines near Moab, Utah, which he and his partner sold to General Electric; he also made money in natural gas exploration in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania.
The Desloge family entertained Russian ballerinas and Shakespearean actors, King Hussein of Jordan, the exiled Chancellor of Austria Kurt Schuschnigg (deposed by the Nazis in 1938 and then incarcerated; freed May 1945 and came to America), and Anne Morrow Lindbergh.