Victor du Pont Papers1775-1827

Victor du Pont (1767-1827), the eldest son of Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours, first came to the United States in 1788 as part of the French diplomatic mission. In 1800 he emigrated with his family and set up the firm Victor du Pont de Nemours & Co. The collection consists primarily of family correspondence and business papers.

Victor du Pont, the son of Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours, was born in Paris on October 1, 1767. In the mid 1780s he was employed at his father's office at the Bureau of Commerce in Paris. In 1788 he came to the United States as part of the French legation and assisted in negotiating a treaty between the State of New York and the five Indian Nations. Du Pont married Gabrielle Joséphine (de la Fite de Pelleport) in 1794. In the 1790s Victor du Pont served on a number of French diplomatic missions in the United States. In 1800 he established a trading company, Victor du Pont de Nemours & Co. After the failure of this firm in 1808, he moved to Delaware and established residence at Louviers on the Brandywine. He established a mill to manufacture cotton cloth and in 1813 became a partner in Du Planty, McCall & Co. Victor du Pont died in Philadelphia on January 30, 1827.

Series A, correspondence of Victor du Pont, consists primarily of letters to his family, 1778-1827, n.d. Those to his brother, Eleuthère Irénée, are the most numerous. The correspondence also describes the emergence of Victor du Pont & Co. and its financial problems.

Series B includes Victor du Pont's writings, student notebooks, and business papers of Victor and Charles I. du Pont, cloth manufacturers. Included are contracts and apprenticeship papers. Also included is a letterbook that Victor du Pont kept while in Paris (1801) on behalf of Du Pont de Nemours, Père et Fils & Cie. Correspondence with Bertram Cruger and Moses L. Moses concern land investments in Kentucky and New York. Special papers include copies of Victor du Pont's student copy books in Latin and Greek (1775-1786), business and personal accounts, including a detailed account of expenses for the voyage of the du Pont family from La Rochelle to the United States (1799-1800). There is also a satirical operetta of 16 pages concerning the family's attempts to build a turnpike near the Brandywine and accounts of Victor & Charles I. du Pont & Company, cloth manufacturers near Wilmington (1810-1825).

Series C are the letters of Gabrielle Josephine du Pont, primarily to her brother-in-law E.I. du Pont and his wife.

Some materials are in French, Latin or Greek.

No restrictions on use.

Correspondence from Victor du Pont concerns his shipments of equipment and payments to or for the powder company, his proposed newspaper advertisement of Du Pont powder for sale in the New York market, and his suggestion that his father distribute some shares in the powder company to his stepsister, Mme [Françoise-Julienne Isle-de-France] Bureaux de Pusy, to strengthen the position of his brother, E. I. du Pont, in the powder company; land values and living conditions in Angelica, N.Y.; his hopes for an expanding American woolen market to benefit from declining Spanish flocks, details concerning the financial establishment of the woolen factory, Du Pont, Bauduy, & Co., and the trip to Europe by Ferdinand Bauduy in its behalf; Victor du Pont's role as friend and mediator in the relations between his brother and Peter Bauduy and with Mme Bureaux de Pusy and his financial position in the Brandywine mill complex; the administration of the Wilmington branch of the Farmers' Bank of the State of Delaware; an evaluation of Madison, Henry Clay, James A. Bayard, Sr., and others in national and state politics; and references to Talleyrand's naturalization papers, a fire at the powder factory (1817), the transfer of Company drafts to his father, du Pont de Nemours, in France by means of George de Caraman, the shipment of Du Pont woolens, and allusions to the activities of members of his family and friends (his sons, Charles and S. F. du Pont, his daughter Amelia's marriage, the travels of General [Jean-Victor] Moreau, Baron [Jean-Guillaume] Hyde de Neuville, the Cazenoves, the d'Autremonts, and Mme Bureaux de Pusy. His correspondents include du Pont de Nemours, E. I. du Pont, Bertram Peter Cruger, Raphael Du Planty, Henry M. Ridgely, G[abriel] Manigault, Alfred Victor du Pont, and letter by Victor du Pont for Paul Saulnier, gardener, of the French National Garden in New Jersey, to the French Minister of the Interior; plus enclosures.

Correspondence to Victor du Pont includes a block arranged and labeled by him concerning the settlement of his debts after his bankruptcy by assignment of his estate (including Kentucky lands and Angelica property) to Guilan McEvers, Bertram P. Cruger, and Moses L. Moses, trustees for his creditors. Claims by others, taxes due, a low market price for land, and an unrewarding trip to Kentucky to dispose of the property there disappointed du Pont's hopes for a profitable arrangement of his accounts. The block includes letters to Victor du Pont from Cruger, Moses, William Lovett, Moses and Lovett, Peter Bauduy; also, two deeds for property near Angelica and in Kentucky, single letters from Peter Bauduy to Cruger, William Warner to Moses, and Cruger to Moses, plus du Pont's observations and conclusions on the Kentucky land title (7 pp.), receipts, and miscellaneous records. The general contents of this group agree with the description made by Mrs. S. F. du Pont in 1880 of one of the “Bundles of Papers that came from Aunt Eleuthera's” [Eleuthera (du Pont) Smith]: “Business papers, Kentucky, Angelica, etc.” [Mrs. S. F. du Pont to Henry A. Du Pont, 10 Sep 1880, Winterthur Collection].

The remaining correspondence to du Pont concerns credits owed to or by Du Pont firms with G. Manigault, Talleyrand, Mountflorence, Rezeville, Grouchy, and other debtors and creditors, relations between Peter Bauduy and E. I. du Pont, the claims against the powder company by Talleyrand and by Mme Bureaux de Pusy, the sale of English powder in the American market, the powder market in South America, shipments of American seeds to France by Victor du Pont and his brother, investments by the d'Autremont family in Kentucky lands and French mills, details of administration and the release of the du Pont farm near Angelica, N.Y., effects of the Burr affair in Louisiana on N. Y. business (1807), journey by Raphael Du Planty to New Orleans, a mission by B. Orsele to Mexico to recover French funds, misuse of letter forwarded by du Pont in an accusation against Mountflorence to a French minister, a subscription by powder workers to pay an immigrant's passage, Pennsylvania property owned by Amelia, du Pont's daughter, and other subjects; correspondents include Raphael Du Planty, Anthony Girard, Louis-Paul d'Autremont, S. Felix Monredon, Robert Rezeville, Dessemet, William Brooks, [Louis-Claude-Marie (?)] Richard, Louis Le Coutteux, Jonas du Pont, of Rotterdam, James C. Mountflorence (LC), Thomas W. Griffith, Baron Hyde de Neuville, Abraham Staats, Vital-Marie Garesché, LeRoy, Bayard and Co., Thomas Wilson, John Vaughan and Bernard Dahlgren, D. P. Brown, James Rogers, William Duane, Louis McLane, B[arthéleni] Laporte; also, single letters to others from Delaire & Canut, and Thomas Brooks, and two lists of American plants whose seeds were requested for French botanists. Translations of five of the items to and from Victor du Pont were published by Mrs. B. G. du Pont in her Life of E. I. du Pont from Contemporary Correspondence...(Newark, 1925-1927).

A collection of school copybooks by Victor du Pont contains his essays in geography and history and translations of Greek and Latin exercises from, among other classical authors, Cornelius Nepos, Cicero, Julius Caesar, and Socrates. One item is stamped, “Hall of Records”, i.e., it was once located in the files of the Company; in 1815 school copybooks of Victor du Pont and of E. I. du Pont, which had once been in the Old Stone Office of the Company, were lent for a time to Mrs. B. G. du Pont.

A collection of school copybooks (402 pp) by Victor du Pont contains translations from the Iliad, Virgil's Aeneid, Bucolics, and Georgics, the Codex Gregorianus, the writings of Tacitus, Titus Livius, Cicero, Horace, and others, two Franco-Greek dictionaries, and a short table of equivalents of twenty languages (1 p.). Also included is a poem, undated, addressed by Victor du Pont to his father and written during his adolescence.

Includes (1) an address in his handwriting on indirect taxation, dated 5 Nov 1790 (16 pp.) to be delivered before the National Assembly (but not recorded in the proceedings, Le Moniteur universel, 7 Nov 1790); (2) a précis by du Pont of the eulogy of Franklin [by Dr. William Smith (1727-1803), delivered 1 March 1791 in Philadelphia]; (3) a translation of family cypher (circa 1804); (4) the declaration of discharge of debt issued to Victor du Pont, 31 May 1810, with a list in du Pont's hand of his creditors and their claims; (5) drafts and copies by Victor du Pont of memorials and depositions concerning the role of E. I. du Pont in the Delaware election held 1 Oct 1813 in Wilmington; (6) “The Turnpike”, an undated MS book containing a collection of light verse written during or to commemorate a trip by du Pont and S. Felix Monredon, annotated by du Pont; and (7) Victor du Pont's personal accounts (1799-1827, n.d.), including two account books: one lists his expenses for his father and the company, Du Pont de Nemours, Père et Fils & Cie., at Rochelle, Newport, and Good Stay Sep 1799-May 1800); and the second, “Book of Family Expenses 1811,” covers the period from moving into the house, Louviers, 28 Mch 1811 to 1816, and includes expenses for housekeeping, clothing, schooling for his children, servants' wages, and du Pont's business expenses arising from the care of sheep, Kentucky lands, the powder factory, the cotton mill -- Du Planty, McCall, & Co., and his steamboat shares (33 pp.); also, receipt and an undated memo on payment due the heirs of a deceased soldier.

Includes business correspondence, two papers addressed to French officials concerning Company investments, business accounts, (1800-1811, 1819) promissory note, memos, etc.; letters include copies from the Company to Louis-Andreé Pichon and to the Paris company office; to the Company from Augustine and John Bousquet, from Henry Jacob Bornand; also from A. and J. Bousquet to Harry Toulmin, and to John Fowler.

The entire collection of papers of Mme Victor du Pont contains only four items and includes single letters to her son, Charles I. du Pont, and to E. I. du Pont, and single letters to her from Raphael Du Planty and Mme Catherine Cruger. Subjects concern the financial position of her family in 1817 (after her husband's transfer to his brother of claims against the powder company) and again in 1834, her unsuccessful plan to visit France in 1818, and the effects of the explosion in the powder mills during the latter year; also, Du Planty's plans to serve the powder company and news of Mme Cruger's activities.

(1809)

Table of contents	Abstract Victor du Pont (1767-1827), the eldest son of Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours, first came to the United States in 1788 as part of the French diplomatic mission. In 1800 he emigrated with his family and set up the firm Victor du Pont de Nemours & Co. The collection consists primarily of family correspondence and business papers.
Background note Scope and content Administrative information Restrictions Provenance Processing info Additional descriptive information Related materials Added entries Contact information Inventory Series A. Correspondence Series B. Special Papers Series C. Gabrielle Joséphine de la Fite de Pelleport du Pont Papers