| John Samuel Montmollin II | |
| Birth Date: | 1808 |
| Birth Place: | Savannah, Georgia, U.S. |
| Death Date: | (aged 51) |
| Death Place: | Savannah River, Georgia, U.S. |
| Death Cause: | Boiler explosion |
| Other Names: | de Montmollin, deMontmollin |
| Occupation: | Human trafficker, slave trader, banker |
John Samuel de Montmollin II (1808 – June 9, 1859) of Savannah, Georgia, was an American slave trader, banker and plantation owner. According to descendants, Montmollin was heavily involved in the organization of the illegal slave transport Wanderer. Montmollin died in a steamboat boiler explosion on the Savannah River in 1859.
Montmollin's maternal grandfather was Jonathan Edwards the younger, thus he was a first cousin, once removed, to Aaron Burr; as vice president, Burr stayed at the Montmollin home in 1802 while visiting Savannah.[1] Montmollin married at Savannah, in 1842, Miss Harriet M. Rossignol.[2] In 1848, he was a city marshal of Savannah,[3] where he owned a plantation.[4]
Montmollin was president of the Mechanics' Savings Bank of Savannah, which had been organized in 1854, and had capital amounting to in 1857.[5] [6] [7] Beginning in 1856, he funded the construction of a still-extant three-story brick building now known as the John Montmollin Warehouse.[8] The third floor was a slave pen (after the city was occupied by Union troops during the American Civil War the building was turned into a school for the city's African-American children, most of whom had never before had the opportunity to learn how to read or write).[9] In December 1858 Montmollin sought to purchase "one or two gangs of rice field Negros."[10] According to his daughter-in-law, who was interviewed in 1931, Montmollin sought to reopen the transatlantic slave trade and was responsible for organizing the illegal human trafficking transport Wanderer in 1858. John S. Montmollin was one of approximately eleven people killed when a boiler exploded on the Savannah River steamboat John G. Lawton on June 9, 1859.[11] His body was found "imbedded in the marsh, head downwards, to the hips, some seventy to eighty yards from where the explosion occurred, showing it must have been driven very high into the air. A handkerchief, which he had in his hand at the time of the accident, was still tight in his grasp."
Montmollin was killed "within a short distance of the spot where his [''Wanderer''] captives had been incarcerated" on an island in the Savannah River.[12]
Following Montmollin's death, his widow found that "her husband died owing debts of more than $30,000" and so in 1863 petitioned a court for permission to sell the estate slaves she had inherited. Permission was granted and she sold 81 slaves in Savannah in April 1863 for .[13]