The du Pont family (English: /duːˈpɒnt/)[1] or Du Pont family is a prominent American family descended from Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours (1739–1817). It has been one of the richest families in the United States since the mid-19th century, when it founded its fortune in the gunpowder business. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it expanded its wealth through the chemical industry and the automotive industry,[2][3] with substantial interests in the DuPont company, General Motors, and various other corporations.
Several former du Pont family estates are open to the public as museums, gardens or parks, such as Winterthur, Nemours, Eleutherian Mills, Longwood Gardens, Gibraltar, Mt. Cuba, and Goodstay.[4] The family's interest in horticulture was brought to the United States by their immigrant progenitors from France and reinforced in later generations by avid gardeners who married into the family. As early as 1924, the du Ponts were recognized by Charles Sprague Sargent, the famed plantsman and director of Harvard's Arnold Arboretum, as "a family which has made the neighborhood of Wilmington, Delaware one of the chief centers of horticulture in the United States."[5]
Two family members were the subjects of well-publicized criminal cases. John Eleuthère du Pont was convicted of murdering wrestling coach Dave Schultz.
As of 2016, the family fortune was estimated at $14.3 billion, spread across more than 3,500 living relatives.[3]
In 1802, Éleuthère Irénée du Pont established a gunpowder mill on the banks of the Brandywine River near Wilmington, Delaware. The location (named Eleutherian Mills) provided all the necessities to operate the mill: a water flow sufficient to power it, available timber (mainly willow trees) that could be turned into charcoal fine enough to use for gunpowder, and close proximity to the Delaware River to allow for shipments of sulfur and saltpeter, the other ingredients used in the manufacture of gunpowder. There were also nearby stone quarries to provide needed building materials.[6]
Over time, the Du Pont company grew into the largest black powder manufacturing firm in the world. The family remained in control of the company up through the 1960s,[7] and family trusts still own a substantial amount of the company's stock. This and other companies run by the du Pont family employed up to 10 percent of Delaware's population at its peak.[8] During the 19th century, the Du Pont family maintained their family wealth by carefully arranged marriages between cousins[9] which, at the time, was the norm for many families.
The stylings "du Pont" and "Du Pont" are most prevalent for the family name in published, copy-edited writings. In many publications, the styling is "du Pont" when quoting an individual's full name and "Du Pont" when speaking of the family as a whole, although some individual Du Ponts have chosen to style it differently, such as Samuel Francis Du Pont. The name of the chemical company founded by the family is today styled solid as "DuPont" in the short form (but the long form is styled as E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company); the stylings "Du Pont" and "DuPont" for the company's short name coexisted in the 20th century, but the latter is now consistently used in the company's branding. The solid styling "duPont" is less common, but the Nemours Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children uses it, as does the duPont Registry. William S. Dutton's mid-20th-century history of the family business[2] uses "Du Pont" both for the family mentioned generally and for the company's short name but "du Pont" in an individual's full name (for example, "Éleuthère Irénée du Pont", "Henry du Pont", "Alfred Victor du Pont", "Lammot du Pont"); for example, "when he [Lammot du Pont] went to General Henry du Pont with the proposal that the Du Ponts manufacture dynamite, he was answered by a blunt and unqualified 'No!'"[2]: 116 ) The first page of Dutton's monograph[2]: 3 contains the following footnote about the surname's styling (the mention of "Samuel Dupont" here refers to the 18th-century Parisian watchmaker, not to his 19th-century descendant): "Samuel Dupont used this form of the family name [i.e., Dupont], but beginning in 1763 his son signed himself 'Du Pont.' Later, he added 'de Nemours' to his name to prevent confusion with two other Duponts in the French Chamber of Deputies. Du Pont, in English, is pronounced with the accent on the second syllable. In French, neither syllable is accented."[2]: 3
French orthographic tradition for the styling of de (or its inflected forms) as a surname particle, in either nobiliary or non-nobiliary form, is discussed at Nobiliary particle § France. In non-nobiliary form, the prevalent French styling of the name is "Dupont", and thus the choice by Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours to begin styling himself so during the monarchical era hints at social ambition. But the influence of French orthography and prerevolutionary class structure on how English orthography styles surnames today is outweighed by how families and individuals so named style themselves.
Alphabetical list of selected descendants of Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours
Below is an alphabetical listing of selected members of the family.
The following list is not a complete genealogy, but is ordered by descent to show the familial relationships between members of the du Pont family throughout history.
^Denise Magnani, The Winterthur Garden: Henry Francis du Pont's Romance with the Land (Wilmington: Harry N. Abrams and The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, Inc., 1995).
^"Happy Trails". americanroads.net. Retrieved 9 October 2016.
^W. Williams, Peter (2016). Religion, Art, and Money: Episcopalians and American Culture from the Civil War to the Great Depression. University of North Carolina Press. p. 176. ISBN9781469626987. The names of fashionable families who were already Episcopalian, like the Morgans, or those, like the Fricks, who now became so, goes on interminably: Aldrich, Astor, Biddle, Booth, Brown, Du Pont, Firestone, Ford, Gardner, Mellon, Morgan, Procter, the Vanderbilt, Whitney. Episcopalians branches of the Baptist Rockefellers and Jewish Guggenheims even appeared on these family trees.
^Robert Barkan, Elliott (2001). Making it in America: A Sourcebook on Eminent Ethnic Americans. ABC-CLIO. p. 103. ISBN9781576070987. Although he was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church in order to secure a "civil status,"he was later baptized a Huguenot.
^Hoffecker, Carol E. (2000). Familiar Relations: The Du Ponts & the University of Delaware. University of Delaware Publishing Press. p. 37. ISBN0-9656848-1-4.
^"Ben DuPont". Chartline Capital Partners. Retrieved 2017-12-12.
^ abWhite, Leslie A. (2016). Modern Capitalist Culture. New York City, NY: Routledge. p. 378. ISBN978-1-59874-157-5. Members of the DuPont family owned directly or indirectly 43.9 percent of the voting stock of the E.I. DuPont de Nemours Company. If this block of stock, by far the largest extant, acted as a unit it would give the DuPont family undisputed control of the company. The E.I. Dupont de Nemours Company owned 23 percent of the common stock of General Motors Corporation, by far the largest block of stock extant, which gave DuPont a safe working control of General Motors.
^United States v. E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., 353 U.S. 586, 588-589 (Supreme Court 1957) ("The complaint alleged a violation of § 7 of the [Clayton] Act resulting from the purchase by E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company in 1917-1919 of a 23% stock interest in General Motors Corporation...The primary issue is whether du Pont's commanding position as General Motors' supplier of automotive finishes and fabrics was achieved on competitive merit alone, or because its acquisition of the General Motors' stock, and the consequent close intercompany relationship, led to the insulation of most of the General Motors' market from free competition, with the resultant likelihood, at the time of suit, of the creation of a monopoly of a line of commerce.").
^Domhoff, G. William (2011). Class and Power in the New Deal: Corporate Moderates, Southern Democrats and the Liberal-Labor Coalition. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. p. 120. ISBN978-0-8047-7452-9.
^Clark, J. M., Hansen, A. H., Ezekiel, M., Montgomery, D. E., Means, G. C. (1939). Structure of the American Economy: Part 1 (Report). Industrial Section, National Resources Committee, National Resources Planning Board. U.S. Government Printing Office. p. 313. Retrieved 2023-02-21
