Johann Caspar Troost

Troost family in 1828: Johann Caspar Troost II in the middle, seated, with tails

Johann Caspar Troost II (born February 6, 1759 in Mülheim an der Ruhr ; † March 8, 1830 there ) was a Rhenish textile manufacturer and Prussian councilor of commerce .

Live and act

Johann Caspar Troost II came from a long-established middle class family from Elberfeld . His father Johann Caspar Troost I (1725–1785) had come from Elberfeld to Mülheim an der Ruhr in 1750 , where Anna Gertrud Overmann from Mülheim was used. Ehrenberg married and settled down as a merchant.

In 1791, Johann Caspar Troost II first founded a spinning mill in Mülheim's Luisental, which was later expanded into the Troost textile factory with a weaving and printing works . He sent his two sons to England to study production techniques and then, on the advice of his younger son Ferdinand, converted his factories to modern English manufacturing methods. ("Dear old man, burn your machines and have some English ones built for you.") This decision, as well as his services to the Rhenish cotton spinning mill, earned him the royal Prussian honorary title of " Kommerzienrat " in 1826 .

After his death, the sons Johann Caspar III and Ferdinand ran the company together until Ferdinand's death. In 1837 Johann Caspar Troost III became the sole owner.

Marriage and offspring

In 1788 he married Anna Gertraud Meisenburg (1770–1844) from Elberfeld. They had five children in total:

• Anna (1789–1847) ⚭ 1810 Hermann Wilhelm von Eicken (1786–1832)
• Charlotte (* 1790) ⚭ 1810 Johann Erich Scheidtmann
• Johann Caspar III (1792–1848), Councilor of Commerce, President of the Mülheim Chamber of Commerce (1841–1846) ⚭ 1816 Anna Elisabeth Gallenkamp (1797–1882). Her son, the merchant Albrecht Troost (1824-1883) is the builder of the later official residence of the President of the Federal Republic of Germany of the Villa Hammerschmidt in Bonn .
• Ferdinand (1794–1837) ⚭ Karoline Verhaes (1796–1885). Her granddaughter Hedwig Pelzer (1854–1940) married the industrialist August Thyssen (1842–1926) in 1872 .
• Henriette (1796–1876) ⚭ Johann Wilhelm Meininghaus (1790–1869)

literature

• Vaterstädtische Blätter (weekly for local history) 1911, no.25
• Ilse Barleben : Mülheim ad Ruhr. Contributions to its history from the city elevation to the founding years . Mülheim an der Ruhr 1959, pp. 279–334.
• Eckhard Bolenz: The first Mülheimer Kommerzienrat was a textile entrepreneur: The Troost family and their companies , in: Horst A. Wessel (Ed.): Mülheim entrepreneurs: Pioneers of the economy. Business history in the city on the river since the end of the 18th century . Klartext Verlag, Essen 2006, pp. 60–73.

Other sources

• City archive Mülheim an der Ruhr, inventory 1550 No. 90 (Mülheim personalities)