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.

Du Pont was a tireless promoter of economic and financial reforms. While this earned him criticism at home it garnered recognition abroad. In 1774, for example, he left for Poland to organize a system of national education. In 1776 political changes in France, which helped create a more favorable environment for him, led to his appointment as France’s inspector general of commerce. In 1778 he served as one of the negotiators of the 1783 Treaty of Paris, by which Great Britain formally recognized the independence of the United States. Three years later, he also helped work out the terms of the commercial treaty of 1786 between France and England.

The outbreak of the French Revolution and the political instability that came with it greatly affected Du Pont’s career as a public servant. As a supporter of a constitutional monarchy, he initially welcomed the revolution. He served as secretary-general of the assembly of notables in 1787, but then barely escaped banishment after the fall of the finance minister Charles Alexandre de Calonne (1734-1802), whose reform measures he had promoted. He physically defended Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette from a mob in August 1792, and as a result was condemned to death by guillotine. He was arrested and imprisoned, but Robespierre’s death led to his release. Du Pont immediately renewed his attacks on the Jacobins, only to be arrested and imprisoned again; his property was looted and destroyed.

In 1799 Du Pont emigrated to the United States, along with his second wife Françoise Robin Poivre (1748–1841) and his two sons Victor Marie and Éleuthère Irénée and their families. There he cultivated close ties with American economic, political and intellectual leaders, especially Thomas Jefferson. In 1800 he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.

In 1802 Du Pont returned to Napoleonic France where he helped President Jefferson negotiate the Louisiana Purchase. However, he was unable to realize his goal of gaining a seat in the Imperial Senate. In 1814 he called for a restoration of the Bourbon monarchy; one year later, Napoleon’s return from exile compelled Du Pont to leave France once again. He settled on his son Éleuthère Irénée’s estate in Delaware, where he died in 1817.

Before settling permanently in the United States, Pierre Samuel’s older son Victor Marie had already lived for several years in the New World. First, in the late 1780s, he helped negotiate a treaty between the State of New York and the Five Indian Nations. In addition, from 1795 to 1798, he served as French consul at Charleston, South Carolina. Upon his return to the United States, he moved with his wife and children to New York City and founded the trading company Victor du Pont de Nemours & Co. He also served as the agent for Louis Pichon, the French Consul-General and chargé d'affairs. In the early 1810s, he relocated to Delaware where he established a woolen company, later called Du Pont, Bauday & Co. In 1813 he became a partner in Du Planty, McCall & Co. In the years between 1815 and 1823, Victor Marie held seats in the Delaware House and then the Senate. He died in Philadelphia.

Victor Marie was married to Gabrielle Joséphine de la Fite de Pelleport, a daughter of the Marquis de Pelleport. They had five children, four surviving to adulthood. Their son Charles Irénée eventually took over his father’s company. Another son was Samuel Francis (1803-1865, APS 1862), who became a Rear Admiral in the United States Navy.

Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours’ younger son Éleuthère Irénée was in his mid-twenties when he arrived in the United States. Like his father, he had been an early supporter of the French Revolution but later joined him in physically defending the king and queen. In the United States, Éleuthère Irénée concentrated his energies on business ventures, particularly the production of gunpowder. At that time the gunpowder available in the United States was of poor quality, and the younger Du Pont hoped to change that. In 1802 he established a gunpowder machinery at Eleuterian Mills, near Wilmington, Delaware. The business struggled for much of the time under his leadership; it carried significant debts, including loans taken out to assist the families of workers killed in an explosion in 1818. Nevertheless, the business eventually grew into one of the largest companies in the United States, turning the Du Pont family into one of the richest and most influential American families of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Éleuthère Irénée died in Greenville, Delaware.

Éleuthère Irénée was married to Sophie Dalmas. They had eight children, including Henry. Henry was married to Louisa Gerhard Du Pont; their son was Henry Algernon Du Pont (1828–1926, APS 1894).

Henry Algernon was born at Eleutherian Mills. After attending private schools and the University of Pennsylvania, he studied at the United States Military Academy at West Point. During the Civil War, he served in the Union Army, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the Army. From 1879 to 1899 he was president and general manager of the Wilmington Northern Railroad Co.

In 1876 Henry Algernon and his wife Pauline Foster moved to Winterthur, near Wilmington, Delaware; he inherited the property in 1889. The estate had been in the Du Pont family since the 1810s, when Éleuthère Irénée purchased the first four tracts of the land that would become Winterthur. By the time Henry Algnernon became its owner it had grown into an estate of 1,135 acres, with a mansion and extensive gardens and farms. He dedicated much of his time after his retirement from business to agricultural pursuits, including the care of his prized Holstein herd.

Henry Algernon also pursued a career in politics. A staunch Republican, he served as U.S. Senator from Delaware from 1906 to 1917. After a failed bid for reelection in 1916 he retired from public service. He died at Winterthur in 1926. His only son Henry Francis (1880-1969) inherited the Winterthur estate.

From the guide to the Du Pont de Nemours family. Papers relating to the American Philosophical Society, 1800-1894, 1800-1894, (American Philosophical Society)