Simon De Visser

In the nineteenth century, sugar was the second largest industry in New York, bested only by the garment trade and followed by publishing. The old Domino Sugar factory, which in its heyday produced 5 million pounds of refined sugar a day, still stands in Williamsburg. Sugar is not native to New York, so how did the raw sugar get to Brooklyn?

Enter Simon de Visser, sugar merchant.

Born in The Hague, Holland, on September 14, 1816, to Salomon and Hilledarda de Visser, Simon emigrated in 1839 at age twenty-three with his parents and five siblings to Texas via New Orleans. Both Simon and his father were listed at immigration as limners, painters of miniature portraits. He returned to New Orleans in about 1850 and with two partners entered the import business, taking over the business of Troisgros & Co.

New Orleans in 1850 was the fifth largest city in the country (after New York, Baltimore, Boston, and Philadelphia), a mixture of races and ethnicities and, like New York, a port of opportunity. A bustling commercial trading hub, it was the primary transport artery for the middle of the country. De Visser & Co. at 74 Magazine Street prospered, mainly importing sugar from Cuba. They also imported Cuban honey, Jamaican rum, Moscovado molasses in cypress barrels, cocoa, coffee, mahogany, sweetmeats, pimento, and, of course, Cuban cigars. He imported Madeira, Sherry, Port, Champagne, and Catalonia wine. De Visser advertised that his store had for sale “all the luxuries of life, admirably arranged.”

Since his livelihood lay in the holds of wooden ships, Simon also entered the steamship and marine insurance businesses, becoming a part owner of the Southern Steamship Company, Orient Mutual Insurance, Home Mutual Insurance Company, and the Sun Mutual Insurance Company—the last advertising its existence in 1862 in the Times-Picayune in both English and French. Maritime records indicate that ships carrying de Visser cargo frequently experienced storm damage.

It was not all smooth sailing on land either for the import business. One night in 1859 the de Visser warehouse in New Orleans was ransacked by robbers. The safe was attempted, reported the newspapers, but without success. “Had the villains got that open, they would have been rewarded by the discovery of $700 or $800.”

A potentially more devastating event was the embezzlement and fraud committed by his partner, Charles Météyé, who was entrusted with paying U.S. customs duties on de Visser imports. Météyé would take cash from the de Visser safe to pay the duties and would fill out a false invoice for a lesser amount and pocket the difference. This went on until discovered by a new collector of customs—the old collector of customs being either totally incompetent or in on the deal. De Visser was arrested, along with his other partner, a Mr. Joseph Leon Villarubia. The U.S. District Court found them guilty of defrauding the government of $30,000 and laid on substantial interest, penalties, and forfeitures totaling $300,000. Pessimistic of his chances on appeal, Simon went to Congress seeking passage of a private bill exonerating him and Villarubia from the penalties and forfeitures. The Senate debate on May 14–15, 1858, over the bill, S. 103, led by Senators John Slidell and Judah P. Benjamin of Louisiana, takes over a dozen pages in the Congressional Record, with long arguments about the liability of an innocent partner for the malfeasance of another partner. The Senate and House duly passed the bill, and President Buchanan signed it into law as Chapter 95, 12 Stat. 889.

The looming Civil War led Simon to decamp to New York City in 1858, yet he kept ties to New Orleans and kept importing sugar. Records of the Cravath law firm, which represented Simon, state the government suspected Simon of “improper and illicit intercourse with the rebels.” Simon was, the firm said, one of their most active clients during the war, enforcing his commercial paper contracts.

After the war, rebuilding the South was a priority for New York merchants and, when Sherman took Savannah, a Savannah Relief Committee was formed in New York by prominent businessmen, who took up a collection to buy food and medical supplies for the city. Simon made the second largest donation, $500, to the fund. Simon also served on the subcommittee to solicit funds from bankers. After the Quebec fire of October 1866, which destroyed over 2,000 buildings, Simon again made the second largest contribution, $100, to that relief fund.

In 1852, Simon married Sophia Bowles from Ireland at the Lafayette Presbyterian Church in New Orleans. He and Sophia had four children. In 1860, he became a naturalized citizen. He reached such prominence that his summer vacation plans were reported in the newspapers: in 1869 to the Clarendon Hotel in Sarasota Springs, New York, and in 1874 to Long Branch, New Jersey.

On January 14, 1875, Simon died at age fifty-eight at the Grand Hotel at West 31st Street and Broadway after a bout of pneumonia. He was survived by his wife and three children, Lizzie, William (who became a noted chess champion), and Harry. A daughter, Sophie, had predeceased him, dying two weeks shy of her first birthday.

He was proposed for the Century in 1868 by William Hegeman and seconded by Charles E. Butler. There is no record in the Century archives of a memorial.

From his obituary in the New York Daily Herald: “He was one of the old class of New York merchants, which by the ravages of death, is fast becoming extinct. . . . He always enjoyed an unimpeachable reputation and credit. At one time he was reputed to be one of the wealthiest of our citizens. His strict integrity during a lifetime of active business in New York had won for him the confidence and esteem of all with whom he had business relations, and his very many social qualities had endeared him to a large circle of friends who will sincerely mourn his sudden taking off.”

Alexander Sanger
2019 Century Association Yearbook