Rash's Surname Index
Notes for Eleuthere Irenee DU PONT
Du Pont de Nemours, Eleuthére Irénée, manufacturer, was born in Paris, France, June 24, 1771; son of Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours and Nicole-Charlotte-Marie-Louise (Le Dée de Pencourt) DuPont. His godfather, the famous Turgot, chose his Christian names. He learned the art of making
gunpowder at the royal mills at Essonne, with a view to succeeding his father's friend, Lavoisier, as superintendent of the French government powder works, a plan interrupted by the revolution. When his father founded a printing and publishing house in the interest of the moderate party (1791) he became its superintendent, thereby entering upon the dangerous field of politics. He was thrice imprisoned and his personal safety often imperilled. He went to the Tuilleries with his father to defend the king, Aug 10, 1792, escaping afterward to the country and lying hidden at Essonne. After the terror he joined his father in opposing the Jacobins who pillaged the latter's property and destroyed the printing house, which left him financially ruined and without employment. With his father and brother and their families he emigrated to America in 1799. Having noticed the poor quality of the American gunpowder of that time he visited France in 1801 for plans, models and machinery, and on his return to the United States
founded the Eleutherean mills for the manufacture of gunpowder, four miles from Wilmington, Del. (1802). He declined sites in Virginia, though urged to locate there by his father's friend, Jefferson, and in Maryland, on account of his antipathy to slavery. These mills in 1810 already produced 600,000 pounds per annum; during the war of 1812 they furnished all the powder used by the American army, and as early as 1834 they were the first in size in the country. They exported for the use of the English army in the Crimea; and they supplied the United States government with a large proportion of all the powder used by the army in the civil war, 1861-65, and in the war with Spain in 1898. Du Pont served as captain of Delaware volunteers in the war of 1812, was a director of the United States bank, a member of the American colonization society, was a leading agriculturist in his state, and was distinguished for public spirit and philanthropy. He married in Paris, in 1791, Sophie Madeleine Dalmas, who died in 1828. His sons, Alfred Victor, Henry and Alexis Irénée, successfully carried on
his business, under the original name of E. I. Du Pont de Nemours & Co. He died of cholera in Philadelphia, Pa., Oct. 31, 1834.
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