thumb|right|Hercules L. Dousman

Hercules Louis Dousman (August 4, 1800 – September 12, 1868) was a fur trader and real-estate speculator who played a large role in the economic development of frontier Wisconsin. He is often called Wisconsin's first millionaire.

Early life and trading activities

Dousman was born in 1800 on Mackinac Island, Michigan, the son of Michael Dousman, a prominent local fur trader, and his wife. His father was highly successful and sent the son to the eastern United States to be educated in Elizabethtown, New Jersey. For a period he worked as a clerk in a New York City store.

After Dousman returned to Mackinac Island, he was employed by the American Fur Company, which his father had served as an agent following the War of 1812. In 1826, the company sent Dousman to the frontier settlement of Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, where he worked as an assistant to Joseph Rolette, the company's local agent.

In Prairie du Chien, Dousman proved his abilities as a trader, quickly rising in the company's ranks. By 1834 he had acquired an interest in the company's Western Outfit, and in 1840 he became an equal partner in the business together with Joseph Rolette and Henry Hastings Sibley.

In 1842 the American Fur Company declared bankruptcy, as the European market had declined, and furs were harder to find in the West. To continue in the trade, Dousman entered into a joint venture with Rolette, Sibley, and Pierre Chouteau (of St. Louis, Missouri) to organize a new company to replace it on upper Mississippi. A few months later, Rolette died in debt to the new company, and most of his estate was seized by the remaining partners, including Dousman. With this and other revenue, Dousman acquired more wealth.

He began to invest in lumber mills in northern Wisconsin and real estate in some of the state's growing population centers. Timber was in high demand in the developing settlements of the upper Midwest.

As Dousman began building his investments during the 1830s, he began a long affair with Margaret Campbell, a local Prairie du Chien woman, who may have been of mixed-race. Together they had three children: Emily, George, and a third unnamed child who died at birth in 1838. Campbell also died of complications at this birth.

In 1844, two years after Joseph Rolette's death, Dousman married his widow, Jane. (She and Rolette had legally separated in 1836, and he built a house for her.) Together the couple moved into the large two-story brick house that Dousman had constructed a year earlier. Hercules and Jane Dousman had one son,

Notes

  • Dousman, Hercules Louis 1800-1868 | Wisconsin Historical Society