Du Pont de Nemours family

The Du Pont de Nemours family is one of the wealthiest and most influential American families. Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours (1739–1817) was a French nobleman, writer, and political economist. He was a member of the Physiocrates. He was an acquaintance of many leading figures of his day, including Thomas Jefferson. The turmoil of the French Revolution compelled his family to immigrate to the United States in the late 1790s. His two sons Victor Marie (1767–1827) and Éleuthère Irénée (1771–1834, APS 1807) became prosperous businessmen. The latter was the founder of a gunpowder machinery at Eleuterian Mills, near Wilmington, Delaware, which eventually grew into one of the largest companies in the United States. His grandson Henry Algernon Du Pont (1828–1926, APS 1894) was U. S. Senator from Delaware.

Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours was born in Paris of French Huguenot parentage. As a boy he was apprenticed as a watchmaker. However, in his early twenties he began to study economic matters, a field in which he soon showed great promise. The publication of two of his pamphlets on finances in 1762 attracted the attention of François Quesnay (1694-1774), an economist and the French king’s consulting physician. Quesnay was a member of the philosophic sect the Économistes. Du Pont soon became a member of Quesnay’s group, which Du Pont eventually named the Physiocrates.

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