William-Louis Ternaux dating history

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William-Louis Ternaux (1763-1833), the eldest son of Charles-Louis Ternaux (1738-1814), took over the direction of his family’s small woolen cloth business at Sedan (Department of Ardennes) in 1781 and rose to become the leading woolens manufacturer in France under Napoleon and during the Restoration. At the height of his success and fame in 1823, he challenged anyone to provide evidence to the contrary. If anyone, he wrote, could prove “... the existence of a manufacturer, not only in France, but in Europe, who has, at the same time, manufactured a greater amount and a greater value of woolen stuffs, created more new stuffs, experimented more with the use of raw materials and with the texture of fabrics, added more to the value of common woolen cloths, than I have done in the course of my life, I stand ready to pay this researcher the sum of 100,000 francs for his efforts.”