Desloge family

The Desloge family (/dəˈloʊʒ/) is one of the oldest French American families in the United States, centered mostly in Missouri and especially at St. Louis. The family rose to wealth through international commerce, sugar refining, oil drilling, fur trading, mineral mining, saw milling, manufacturing, railroads, real estate, and riverboats. The Desloge family are among the “French Aristocrats in the American West”, Carl Eckberg's phrase for the prominent French families in Missouri whose impact was “characterized as much by family connections, private enterprise and negotiation as by conquest”. The family motto is "Deus Honestum Fortis" (God, Honor, Strength).

The family has funded hospitals and donated large tracts of land for public parks and conservation.

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.

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