| Du Pont | |
|---|---|
| Ethnicity | French American |
| Current region | Delaware and New York, United States |
| Information | |
| Place of origin | France |
| Notable members | Eleuthère Irénée Du Pont De Nemours, Samuel Francis Du Pont |
| Connected families | Roosevelt family, Vanderbilt family |
| Name origin and meaning | "Of the bridge" |
The Du Pont family is an American family descended from Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours (1739–1817). The son of a Paris watchmaker and a member of a Burgundian Huguenot family, and descendant of a minor noble family on his mother's side, he and his sons, Victor Marie du Pont and Eleuthère Irénée du Pont, emigrated to the United States in 1800 and used the resources of their Huguenot heritage to found one of the most prominent of American families, and one of its most successful corporations, E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, initially established by Eleuthère Irénée as a gunpowder manufacturer. Various members of the family managed the company well into the twentieth century and to this day family trusts constitute a substantial portion of the company's ownership. This and other companies run by the du Pont family employ some five to ten percent of Delaware's population. The family also played a very large part in politics during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and were responsible for the idea of the Louisiana purchase. During the 19th century, the Du Pont family maintained their family wealth by carefully arranged marriages between first cousins[1] which, at the time, was the norm for many rich families.
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The usual spelling of the family name is du Pont when quoting an individual's full name and Du Pont when speaking of the family as a whole; some individual Du Ponts have chosen to spell it differently, perhaps most notably Samuel Francis Du Pont. However, the name of the chemical company founded by the family is commonly referred to as DuPont, or, in the long form, E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company. Other members spelled it as duPont, notably the renowned thoroughbred racehorse owners William duPont, Jr. and his sister, Marion duPont Scott.[2]
Below is an alphabetical listing of selected notable members of the family. It is followed by a listing of their families in order of descent. The listing is intended only to illustrate the relationships among the notable members of the family and is not a complete genealogy. The only family groupings and lines of descent shown are those necessary to illustrate relationships for notable members of the family. By 1942 there were believed to be 705 direct descendants of Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours and there are now well over 2000 living members of the family.