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Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours | |
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| Personal details | |
| Born | Pierre Samuel du Pont (1739-12-14)14 December 1739 Paris, France |
| Died | 7 August 1817(1817-08-07) (aged 77) |
| Spouses | |
| Children | Victor Marie du Pont Eleuthère Irénée du Pont |
| Residence(s) | Chevannes, Burgundy;Nemours, France |
Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours (/djuːˈpɒnt,ˈdjuːpɒnt/dew-PONT,DEW-pont,[1]French:[pjɛʁsamɥɛldypɔ̃d(ə)nəmuʁ]; 14 December 1739 – 7 August 1817) was a French-American writer, economist, publisher and government official. During theFrench Revolution, he, his two sons and their families migrated to the United States.
His sonÉleuthère Irénée du Pont was the founder ofE. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company. He was the patriarch and progenitor of one of the United States's most successful and wealthiest business dynasties of the 19th and 20th centuries.
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Pierre du Pont was born on 14 December 1739, the son of Samuel du Pont and Anne Alexandrine de Montchanin. His father was a watchmaker and French Protestant, orHuguenot. His mother was a descendant of an impoverished minornoble family fromBurgundy.
Du Pont married Nicole-Charlotte Marie-Louise le Dée de Rencourt in 1766, also of a minor noble family. They had three sons:Victor Marie (1767–1827), a manufacturer and politician; Paul François (December 1769–January 1770); andÉleuthère Irénée (1771–1834), the founder of E.I. duPont de Nemours and Company in the United States. Nicole-Charlotte died 3 September 1784 oftyphoid.[2]
With a lively intelligence and high ambition, Pierre became estranged from his father, who wanted him to be a watchmaker. The younger man developed a wide range of acquaintances with access to the French court during theAncien Régime period. Eventually he became the protégé of Dr.François Quesnay, the personal physician of KingLouis XV's mistress,Madame de Pompadour. Quesnay was the leader of a faction known as theéconomistes, a group of liberals at the court dedicated to economic and agricultural reforms. By the early 1760s, du Pont's writings on the national economy had drawn the attention of intellectuals such asVoltaire andTurgot. His 1768 book onphysiocracy (Physiocratie, ou Constitution naturelle du gouvernement le plus avantageux au genre humain) advocated lowtariffs andfree trade among nations, deeply influencedAdam Smith of Scotland.
In 1768, he took over fromNicolas Baudeau, editor ofEphémérides du citoyen, ou Bibliothèque raisonnée des sciences morales et politiques; he publishedObservations sur l'esclavage des Negres in volume 6.
He was invited in 1774 by KingStanisław August Poniatowski (Stanislaus II Augustus) of thePolish–Lithuanian Commonwealth to help organize that country's educational system.[3] The appointment to theCommission of National Education, with which he worked for several months, helped push his career forward, bringing him an appointment within the French government.[3]
He served as French inspector general of commerce underLouis XVI. He helped negotiate thetreaty of 1783, by which Great Britain formally recognized the independence of the United States, and arranged the terms of a commercial treaty signed by France and England in 1786.
In 1784, he was ennobled bylettres patentes from Louis XVI (a process known asnoblesse de lettres), which added thede Nemours ('ofNemours') suffix to his name to reflect his residence.
Du Pont initially supported theFrench Revolution and served as president of theNational Constituent Assembly.
He and his son Eleuthère were among those who physically defendedLouis XVI andMarie Antoinette from a mob besieging theTuileries Palace in Paris duringthe insurrection of 10 August 1792. Condemned to theguillotine during theReign of Terror, du Pont was awaiting execution whenMaximilien Robespierre fell on9 thermidor an IV (27 July 1794), and he was spared.
He married Françoise Robin on5 vendémiaire an IV (27 September 1795). Robin was the daughter of Antoine Robin de Livet, a French aristocrat who lived in Lyon, and the widow ofPierre Poivre, the noted French administrator. After du Pont's house was sacked by a mob during the events of18 Fructidor V (4 September 1797), he, his sons and their families immigrated to the United States in 1799.
They hoped (but failed) to found a model community of French exiles. In the United States, du Pont developed strong ties with industry and government, in particular withThomas Jefferson, with whom he had been acquainted since at least 1787 and who had referred to him as "one of the very great men of the age" and "the ablest man in France."[4]
Du Pont engaged in informal diplomacy between the United States and France during the reign ofNapoleon. He was the originator of an idea that eventually became theLouisiana Purchase, as a way to avoid French troops landing inNew Orleans, and possibly sparking armed conflict with U.S. forces.[citation needed] Eventually, he settled in the U.S. permanently; he died there in 1817.[citation needed]
His son Éleuthère, who had studied chemistry in France withAntoine Lavoisier, founded agunpowder manufacturing plant, based on his experience in France as a chemist. It became one of the largest and most successful American corporations, known today asDuPont.[citation needed]
In 1800, he was elected a member of theAmerican Philosophical Society inPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania.[5]
