Samuel Louis Crommelin

Samuel-Louis Louis Crommelin (1652–1727) was a French Huguenot exile, who became director of an Irish linen business.

Life Crommelin was born in May 1652 at Armandcourt, near Saint-Quentin in Picardy, into a family of landowners with a tradition of growing flax; his father, Louis Crommelin, married in 1648 to Marie Mettayer, was wealthy and had four sons, Samuel-Louis, Samuel, William, and Alexander. Samuel-Louis Crommelin, called Louis, was in business flax-spinning and linen-weaving. The family was Protestant, and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 hit hard even though Louis was a Catholic convert of 1683. With his son and two daughters he made his way to Amsterdam. There he became partner in a bank, and was joined by his brothers Samuel and William.

Under William III and Mary II, Thomas Southwell had access to funds to develop Irish industry. Huguenot linen-workers had been encouraged to settle at Lisburn where already there was some manufacture of linen. In 1696 the English parliament passed an act admitting all products of hemp and flax duty free from Ireland to England; the Irish parliament in November 1697 passed an act for fostering the linen manufacture. William III's policy was to discourage the Irish woollen trade, but to build up linen manufacture there.

Baron Conway gave a site for weaving workshops, and Irish apprentices were taken on. Dutchmen were engaged to teach flax-growing to farmers, and to superintend bleaching operations. It is not without some reason that Crommelin has been credited with originating, as regards Ulster, a system of technical education for the textile art. Crommelin was assisted by his brothers, and the linens and cambrics could replace imported textiles. In 1705 a factory was opened at Kilkenny, under the management of William Crommelin.

The Crommelin family became extinct in the main line, but the name survived in a branch of the family of de la Cherois, connections by marriage.