Eleuthere Irenee du Pont
| Éleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours | |
 Founder
E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company | |
| Born | June 24 1771 Paris, France |
|---|---|
| Died | October 31 1834 (aged 63) Greenville, Delaware |
| Residence | Eleutherian Mills, Greenville, Delaware |
| Spouse(s) | Sophie Madeleine Dalmas |
| Children | Victorine Elizabeth du Pont Lucille du Pont |
| Parents | Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours Nicole Charlotte Marie Louise Le Dée de Rencourt |
Signature | |
Éleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours (June 24, 1771 – October 31, 1834), known as Irénée du Pont, or E.I. du Pont, was a French-born American chemist and industrialist who immigrated to the United States in 1799 and founded the gunpowder manufacturer, E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company. His descendants, the Du Pont family, were one of America's richest and most prominent families in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Early life and family
Irnee was born in 1771 in Paris to Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours and Nicole Charlotte Marie Louise Le Dée de Rencourt.[1] They were a distinguished family in France with connections to Louis XVI, Thomas Jefferson, and French chemistry researcher Lavoisier..[2] When only a teenager, though du Pont did not care for other studies, showed tremendous interest in gunpowder and engaged in much independent research. In fact, at age 14 he entered the Royal College in Paris and worked as an apprentice with Lavoisier in manufacturing gunpowder for the government. A few years later, after du Pont left his apprencticeship and lost his connection to government gunpowder manufacture, he began to manage his father's publishing house. At this time, du Pont met Sophie Madeleine Dalmas who he became determined to marry. Only after much persistance and even offering to fight in two duels for her hand in marriage did her father agree. They were finally married in 1791, and came to have eight children.
Like his father, he was initially a supporter of the French Revolution. However, both were among those who physically defended King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette from a mob besieging the Tuileries Palace in Paris during the insurrection of August 10, 1792. After his father narrowly escaped the guillotine and the family house was sacked by a mob in 1797 during the events of 18 Fructidor, the entire family left for the United States in 1799. They hoped (but failed) to create a model community of French émigrés. Arriving with his family in America in 1800, du Pont established his home Eleutherian Mills on the Brandywine Creek in Delaware.
E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company
In 1802, du Pont began his famed gunpowder company in his home on Brandywine Creek near Wilmington, Delaware, using capital and gunpowder machinery imported from France. He brought an expertise in chemistry and gunpowder making during a time when the quality of American made gunpowder was very poor. As such industry in North America was lagging behind Europe and so du Pont recognized a market for it. Beginning as a gunpowder manufacturer, the company grew quickly, and by the time of du Pont's death in 1834, it ranked among the largest of American companies in existence. By the mid nineteenth century, it had become the largest supplier of gunpowder to the United States military, and is still very successful even 200 years later, having diversified to manufacture several industrial products.
Death and legacy
Éleuthère Irénée du Pont died of cholera on October 31, 1834 at the Eleutherian Mills, near Greenville, Delaware. The company he founded would become one of the largest and most successful American corporations. DUring the American Cival War, it supplied as much as half of the gunpowder used by the Union Army. His sons, Alfred V. du Pont (1798–1856) and Henry du Pont (1812–1889), were its managers in the years after his death.
The site of his gunpowder mill in Delaware was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1966. The Hagley Museum and Library was also created along the banks of the Brandywine River. It is a nonprofit educational institution that includes the first du Pont family home and garden in the United States, the powder yards, and a nineteenth-century machine shop. On the hillside below the mansion lies a Renaissance-Revival garden, with terraces and statuary, created by Louise Evalina du Pont Crowninshield (1877-1958) in the 1920s. The Eleutherian Mills-Hagley Foundation was formed in 1954, and the museum opened to the public in 1957.
| New Title new company |
President of Du Pont 1802 – October 31, 1834 |
Succeeded by: Alfred V. du Pont |
Notes
- ↑ Éleuthère Irénée du Pont. Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History. Gale Group, 1999. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Retrieved Dec. 20, 2007.
- ↑ "E. Irenee Dupont." World of Chemistry. Thomson Gale, 2006. Biography Resource Center, retrieved Dec. 20, 2007.
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Colby, Gerald. Du Pont: Behind the Nylon Curtain. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974.ISBN 0132210770
- du Pont, B.G., E. I. Du Pont De Nemours And Company: A History 1802 To 1902. Kessinger Publishing, 2004. ISBN 1417916850
- du Pont, Pierre S., Genealogy of the Du Pont Family 1739-1942. Wilmington: Hambleton Printing & Publishing, 1942.
- Dutton, William S. Du Pont, One Hundred and Fifty Years. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1942.
- Winkler, John K. The du Pont Dynasty. New York: Blue Ribbon Books, 1935.
External links
- Bio at the Du Pont company website. Retrieved December 19, 2007.
- Hagley Museum and Library Hagley.org. Retrieved December 19, 2007.
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