Antoine was born into an upper middle class French family, bourgeois, and he had a demanding Jesuit education which included theology, law, agriculture, science, botany, and zoology. At the age of 25 Antoine made his departure from France to the New World — probably as a stowaway, because there is no record of his departure.
On this day July 24th, in 1701, Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, founds the city of Detroit. It was to be a fur trading post, a very lucrative business at the time, and guarded by a fort because of the on-and-off warring between Native American’s and the French fur traders here. The founders of Detroit based car company, Cadillac, named their company after Antoine, and that trademark Cadillac emblem is derived from Antoine’s own bearing.
Detroit is the largest city in Michigan and is known for car manufacturing, including brands like GM, Chrysler, Cadillac, Chevrolet, and Ford. The Metropolitan area of Detroit has a population of 5.2 million people. Detroit is the hometown of rapper Eminem, who wrote raps about incredibly high crime rate of Detroit, although in recent years (post 2000) the crime rate has gone down. Detroit also has the 5th largest gambling scene in the U.S., which brings in huge amounts of tax revenue.