
With a week's eviction notice, he removed them from the family home at Swamp Hall and had it destroyed. The couple's marriage had never been a happy one, and although du Pont supported his family financially, with $24,000 a year in support, he cut off contact with all but his eldest child, Madeleine du Pont. The same year, 1906, he divorced his first wife, Bessie. Divorce and remarriage ĭuring this period, du Pont was involved in a hunting accident that would eventually cost him an eye. Alfred was directly engaged with the company and instituted major changes to its operation that resulted in greater efficiency and safety, leading to a boom in business. Pierre du Pont was named Treasurer and Executive Vice President of the company, while Alfred du Pont served as vice president for operations and took over the black powder manufacture and sat on the Executive Committee. The actual amount of money which the partners were required to pay was $2,100, at $700 each for lawyers' fees. According to the Trust organization, the company was purchased "for $15.4 million-$12 million in notes and 33,000 shares of the reorganized DuPont", with the partners retaining $8.6 million worth of shares (86,400).

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They had no money, but the cousins were able to convince other family members to exchange their company shares for a promissory note instead of cash, plus shares in the reorganized company. Coleman du Pont, who would be president, and Pierre S. Du Pont proposed keeping the company in the family, and the senior partners agreed on condition that du Pont be joined in the venture by T. In 1902, upon the death of Eugène du Pont, the three senior partners considered selling the company to competitor Laflin & Rand Powder Company. Beyond that, Eugène du Pont and other family members largely ignored du Pont, excluding him from the company board. du Pont de Nemours and Company, and du Pont was made a limited partner. In 1889, the manufacturing plant passed to the management of Eugène du Pont, at which time it was reorganized and renamed E.I. du Pont Foundation, as "one of the nation's top powder men." Most of the over 200 patents he registered were related to this work.ĭu Pont married his cousin Bessie Gardner (1864–1949) in 1887, and she was the mother of his first four children. Though he started in a low position, he eventually became known, according to the Alfred I. In 1884, after only two years at MIT, he left to work at the family's gunpowder manufacturing plant in the Brandywine mills. Coleman du Pont.įamily business Bessie Gardner du Pont After graduation, he enrolled in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, sharing a room with his cousin T. The girls remained in the home, but du Pont was sent to boarding school: first, to the religious Shinn Academy in New Jersey and then, two years later, Phillips Academy at Andover, Massachusetts. ĭu Pont's family intended to separate the children and sell their family home, Swamp Hall, but were persuaded otherwise by the fierce resistance of the children. The du Pont children were orphaned a month later when Éleuthère followed, a victim of tuberculosis.

When du Pont was 13, his mother, who had a history of mental illness, was committed to an asylum following an episode of hysteria. The son of Éleuthère Irénée du Pont II, a partner in the DuPont family gunpowder business, and Charlotte Shepard Henderson, he had two older sisters and two younger brothers. duPont Testamentary Trust.ĭu Pont was born in the Brandywine Valley region of Delaware to which his great-great-grandfather Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours had immigrated with his sons after the French Revolution. He died a multimillionaire, with the bulk of his fortune sustaining the Alfred I. du Pont de Nemours and Company (now known as DuPont), in which for many years he served as a director of the board and Vice President of operations.įollowing an acrimonious departure and a brief dip in personal fortunes, he embarked on business of his own, investing in land and banking in Florida. Īlfred du Pont first rose to prominence through his work in his family's Delaware-based gunpowder manufacturing plant, E. Mary (Alicia) Heyward Bradford (1907–1920 her death)Īlfred Irénée du Pont (– April 28, 1935) was an American industrialist, financier, philanthropist and a member of the influential Du Pont family.
