Antoine Crozat

Antoine Crozat, 1st Marquis of Châtel (c. 1655 – 7 June 1738), French founder of an immense fortune, was the first proprietary owner of French Louisiana, from 1712 to 1717.

Career Antoine Crozat and his brother Pierre Crozat were born in Toulouse, France, the sons of a wealthy banking family. They moved to Paris around 1700 and rose from obscurity to become two of the wealthiest financiers of France. By way of lending money to the government, Antoine was ennobled as the Marquis du Châtel, a title he transmitted to his eldest son Louis-François. He became a financial counselor to Louis XIV. He invested in the Guinea Company and the Asiento Company, two lucrative overseas franchises involved in the slave trade. The king eventually offered him a 15‑year trade monopoly in Louisiana. Crozat's term running and influencing Louisiana was quite unpopular with the settlers, and Crozat ceded the monopoly only 5 years into the 15-year term. As Crozat left, he claimed that tobacco could be grown in Louisiana. The monopoly was transferred to the Scottish economist and businessman John Law in 1717 under a group called the Company of the West (Compagnie d'Occident).

Personal life

In 1690 Antoine Crozat married Marguerite Legendre (1670–1742). They had four children.

Louis François Crozat, 2nd Marquis of Châtel (1691–1750), who inherited his uncle Pierre's collection of paintings and his hôtel in the Rue de Richelieu Marie Anne Crozat (1695–1729), who married the Count of Évreux, Louis Henri de La Tour d'Auvergne, son of Godefroy Maurice de La Tour d'Auvergne and Marie Anne Mancini Joseph Antoine Crozat, Marquis of Thugny (1696–1751)