Firmin V. Desloge

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

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.

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.

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. The use of the new diamond drill and the 1893 arrival of a branch from the Mississippi River & Bonne Terre Railroad allowed the already-successful lead mining operations to expand.

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