He was sent to Swamp Hall to tell the five children that they were to be split up among several relatives, but they had been warned and met him at the door armed with garden tools and kitchen utensils. The family guardian for Alfred and his siblings was “Uncle Fred,” Alfred Victor du Pont, a crusty old bachelor, well-liked by all of his nieces and nephews. His father had long been an invalid from tuberculosis and died a month after her. His mother increasingly fell into fits of depression, and when he was only 13, he saw her for the last time as she was taken away as a raving maniac to a Philadelphia mental hospital. He was most proud of his reputation as the world’s best hands-on maker of gunpowder.īut early in life, he was struck by an almost unbelievable tragedy. As an adult, he led a worker’s music band and generally just hung out with them socially to the displeasure of his first wife, Bessie, who was one of the more uptight members of the du Pont family. When he was young, he played with the worker’s children. There was no swamp anywhere near it-Alfred named it to ridicule the pompous names other du Ponts gave to their mansions.Īlfred always preferred the informal company of the powder mill workers to his many du Pont cousins. Born in 1864, one of five children, he grew up in Swamp Hall, a moderate, rustic mansion along the Brandywine River, close to the gunpowder mills of the original DuPont company. du Pont was one of the three cousins who bought the DuPont company in the early 1900s (see posting of January 14). “Wow, I sure wish I had been Alfred.” If they knew the true details of his life, they would not want it. du Pont’s fabulous Nemours mansion just outside of Wilmington, DE, must think to themselves.
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