Joseph Dessert was born January 8, 1819, in Maskinonge, Quebec, Canada, one of twelve children of Pierre and Melonie (or Josephte) Beaulieu Dessert. He was educated in local schools and worked in lumbering in Canada until he was about twenty years old. When he was twenty-one, he was employed by the American Fur Company, La Pointe (now Ashland), Wisconsin, for which he worked until 1844. In the fall of 1844, following a visit to Canada, Dessert missed the last boat from Milwaukee to Lake Superior, and began to walk north. He eventually traveled as far as Little Bull Falls (now Mosinee), where he found work in a sawmill owned by John L. Moore. Dessert worked for Moore until 1849, when he, with William Pentecost (or Pencast), Henry Cate, and James Etheridge, rented Moore's mill under the name of Pentecost, Dessert and Company. Pentecost eventually left the business, and on March 22, 1854, the remaining partners bought out Moore in the name of Dessert, Cate and Company. The company was not profitable, but Dessert remained in the lumber business.
After the Civil War, the Wisconsin lumber industry experienced a boom. In 1867 Dessert purchased a rotary saw, which increased the capacity of his mill. The railroad came into the region in 1875 and Dessert's company constructed twelve miles of logging railroad to connect the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul line with 13,000 acres of timber near Mosinee. In 1880 Dessert's nephew, Louis Dessert, joined the partnership, then called Joseph Dessert and Company. During the next few years, the two men rebuilt the mill, introduced band saws, and increased their output of lumber.
The Joseph Dessert Lumber Company was incorporated by Joseph and Louis Dessert and Henry M. Thompson, Joseph's son-in-law, in 1890. The three founders and Stella Thompson, Joseph's daughter, were stockholders. Over the years the company became involved in land operations and management; logging; and the wholesale and retail selling of lumber, building supplies, and hardware. In 1904 the Mosinee Land, Log and Timber Company was formed and eventually took over many of the operations of the Dessert Lumber Co., although the companies coexisted for many years. The Dessert family, including Abbie, Howard, and Nelle Dessert, and Stella Thompson, controlled both companies. Although separately incorporated, both companies were operated as a single concern and the records of both were intermixed. The timber in the Mosinee area was exhausted by 1905, and at that time the Joseph Dessert Lumber Co. mill was closed. By that date, the company had logged 43,000 acres of pine, hemlock, and hardwood, and had made Joseph Dessert a multimillionaire.
The Dessert family controlled at least one other lumber company in Wisconsin, the Westfield and Fall River Lumber Company (formerly the Watertown Lumber Co.), founded in 1902 and dissolved in 1927. In addition to its lumber interests in Wisconsin, the family was involved in the Dessert and Brown Lumber Company in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
In 1862, Joseph Dessert married Mary Sanford, daughter of William E. and Lavina T. Sanford of Waukesha County, Wisconsin. The couple had two daughters, Stella and Marion, who died in infancy. Mary Dessert died on July 1, 1881. Dessert was fairly active in local civic affairs. It was he who suggested in 1856 that the newly-organized township be named Mosinee, after an Indian chief living nearby. He served for many years as chairman of the town board of supervisors, and was elected the first president of the village after incorporation in 1889. In 1906 Dessert gave Mosinee its public library. He retired to Milwaukee, where he lived the last five years of his life with Stella and Henry Thompson, and where he died December 31, 1910, at the age of ninety-two.
Louis Dessert was born June 6, 1849, in Canada, to Antoine and Edvige (Rotonelle) Dessert. As a boy he began working in sawmills and lumber yards. Dessert came to Marathon County, Wisconsin, in 1869, where he continued in the lumber industry with his uncle.
Abigail (Abbie) Dessert, wife of Louis Dessert, was born December 3, 1854, in Lisbon, New Hampshire. Her father, Learned W. Richardson, moved the family to Wisconsin in 1858, where he was in lumbering. The family moved to Mosinee in 1878. Abigail and Louis Dessert were married November 25, 1882. She died in Wausau at the age of 83, survived by three children, Howard, Louise, and Blanche Dessert Stone, wife of Federal Judge Patrick T. Stone.
