Alfred lost an eye in a hunting accident in Ball's Neck, Virginia, while visiting the Ball family. They persuaded their elders to let them remain at home together receiving help from the family's loyal staff.ġ5. He and his four siblings, ranging in age from 9 to 17, resisted the family's attempts to have them placed with various aunts and uncles. Alfred's parents died within a month of each other when Alfred was 13. Considered something of an engineering and mechanical genious, Alfred corresponded with Thomas Edison.ġ4. In his career, Alfred developed more than 200 patents, including the first gasoline-powered locomotive in the United States.ġ3. Although Alfred did not oppose a state income tax in Delaware, he did ardently resist one when proposed in Florida, instead favoring higher inheritance taxes.ġ2. He mostly used the money to meet on-the-spot requests for charity.ġ1. Alfred seldom carried less than $500 on him, and generally, it was several times that much. Alfred boasts in his correspondence that he was facile in French, German, Greek, Latin and English, and credits Bible study for this.ġ0. Alfred and Jessie delayed their trip home to the States for almost a month, so Mummy could accompany them on a ship sailing directly from Egypt to the U.S., rather than having to be quarantined in England for six months without them.ĩ. "Mummy," the dog said to be in a prominent portrait of Jessie, was found sickly and suffering on a street in Cairo, Egypt. The second was designed by naval architect A. The first was designed by naval architect Edward Carroll. Alfred played an active role in the design of two of his yachts, Nenemooshas I and II and often performed engine maintenance himself. Ball took a pay cut of $13,000 per year.ħ. Ed Ball, Alfred's brother-in-law, left an extremely lucrative sales career ($18,000 per year in 1923) to work for him. Alfred duPont personally answered every letter addressed to him.Ħ. (The Misses Brereton were his secretaries).ĥ. Alfred's executive assistant, Laura Walls, consistently would drew his attention to the daily correspondence from the elderly, raising his interest in their needs. He was impressed enough to pay for an overweight niece to be a resident there for a few months. Alfred visited an unusual health spa in Battle Creek, Michigan, run by the eccentric health guru of the time, Dr. He was: son, brother, father, stepfather, foster-father, godfather, uncle, single, married, divorced and widowed.ģ. In his lifetime, Alfred played all the family roles more commonly seen in contemporary men. duPont stands for "Irenee," meaning "peace." Alfred shares his middle name with Eleuthere Irenee, founder of the DuPont gunpowder works, for whom Alfred's father was named.Ģ. His will created Nemours Mansion and Gardens "for the pleasure and benefit of the public," as well as created The Nemours Foundation, which provides health care to hundreds of thousands of children each year in Delaware and in Florida. He put nearly a half million dollars in this project until the state adopted a government-funded pension plan in 1931. He moved his legal residence to Florida in 1925, but in 1929 he personally funded an "old-age pension" for every elderly, indigent citizen living in the state of Delaware. By 1909, he was building Nemours with the architectural firm of Carrere and Hastings.Īlfred left the DuPont Company in 1916. Coleman du Pont purchased the company to keep it in the family. In 1902 Alfred and his cousins Pierre and T. When he returned to Delaware in 1881, he began work as an apprentice powder man and rose to become a partner in 1891. He would attend Phillips Academy in Andover, and then spent two years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, because he thought it would best prepare him to help run the family gunpowder mills. duPont was a Victorian man who helped lay the groundwork for his family's company to be the international corporation it is today.Īnd the children's hospital and organizations he helped found will mark what would have been his 150th birthday Monday with tours for staff members of the carillon and his crypt at Nemours, the French-influenced house he built in Wilmington, as a gift to his second wife, Alicia.īorn in 1864, he would become a photographer, manufacturer, pugilist, musician, politician, banker, inventor, suffragist, newspaper owner, yachtsman, businessman and philanthropist.
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