The story of the richest family in the history of the United States is filled with war, murder, and secrecy. Its also filled with great lessons about growing an enterprise from a father and son who fled France after the beheading of King Louis the XVI.

The company the family created was DuPont, a global enterprise that became the largest chemical company in the USA, the country where 28 percent of all global chemicals are produced. The company’s riches were driven by world-changing inventions such as nylon, kevlar, and teflon. But, at its roots, the company was built by making gunpowder on a beautiful creek in Wilmington, Delaware.

The DuPont company and family history has admittedly dark spots, but I want to focus instead though on the founder, Eleuthère Irénée du Pont, and what drove his initial success in the early 19th century. The enterprise growth was achieved by using modern-day business tactics we talk about often such including dominating a market with superior product, creating a strong company culture that helped it overcome incredible early obstacles, and the founder’s development of his “skills that trumped his passion”.

When Eleuthère landed in the USA in 1799 from France, the du Pont family was in fear for their lives. Eleuthère’s father served as the French Inspector General of Commerce under King Louis XVI in the late 1700s. The French Revolution was in full swing, and many of the du Pont’s friends and colleagues had been executed, including the King himself. Eleuthère and his father had both been imprisoned twice in France for defending the king, and their printing/publishing business in France had been destroyed.

Eleuthère’s father had the initial idea to come to America in order to start a new French refugee community. He gathered French investors, and sold the idea of a beautiful new land for French in the USA, though his plans for monetizing the plan were foggy. As connected as the du Pont family was in France, their sea voyage to the USA took 91 days, and they had to ask English ships for rations twice along the way. Upon arrival, they settled in Wilmington, Delaware, which had a small French community.

Eleuthère got to know the French community there and on a hunting trip noticed how horrible American gunpowder was. He thought of the idea to make a great product company in the USA for gunpowder. Eleuthère, at the encouragement of his father, had studied in Paris under Antoine Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry. Lavoisier was the head of the French government’s gunpowder mills, and while it wasn’t Eleuthère’s initial passion, he had become a strong chemist himself. The French community in the USA encouraged Eleuthère to pursue the gunpowder company as a way to serve the burgeoning American frontier market that had massive needs for gunpowder. Little did Eleuthère know that, the coming war of 1812 and American Civil War would take DuPont to a whole new level from government orders globally.

Eleuthère purchased about 100 acres on the the Brandywine Creek in Wilmington and built the original DuPont gunpowder mill. He immediately improved the chemicals being used for gunpowder and the refining process, and relied heavily on his connections in France for guidance. DuPont soon got the attention at the highest levels of American military being praised by Thomas Jefferson. The first order came in in 1804, two years into developing the product and beginning the company in 1802. The company made 44k lbs of gunpowder that first year, then by 1812 had orders totalling 750k lbs, 17x growth.

One of the key factors for DuPont’s success was his ability to create a unique community around his company. Eleuthère almost exclusively hired French-speaking employees, most of whom, including his own family, lived on the acreage where the gunpowder was made. They lived, ate, and slept at the gunpowder mills. He found that the quality of the gunpowder made by the Frenchmen was superior than the American workers. Outside French immigrants, there were French-speaking workers that were French-Canadians and, and an enclave of French plantation owners that had fled the revolution in Haiti. Eleuthère preferred the French-Canadians because they were more accustomed to the rough American life versus many French gentleman that came and struggled with the frontier life in America.

The DuPont company community would have its biggest test in 1818 when the tranquil Brandywine Creek was interrupted by a massive gunpowder explosion that immediately killed 40 workers. Eleuthère was away on business and returned completely devastated. The deaths left hundreds of orphans and widows that all lived on the acreage. In a pivotal moment in DuPont company history and an act of Extreme Ownership, as Jocko Willink speaks of, Eleuthère took full responsibility and set up these orphans and widows with generous pensions that were by no means required by any existing American laws. Eleuthère had built massive trust within the company community after his own father had died the year before helping put out a fire in the gunpowder mill at the age of 78.

While famous for gunpowder, Eleuthère’s passion had always been gardening. His living in France was made as a printer/publisher, but he stated his occupation as “botanist” on his passport upon entering the USA at age 29. His early letters to his wife Sophie were filled with discussions of their children, and their shared passion for gardening. Even at the age of 20, Eleuthère had been trying to exclusively work as a botanist, but simply could not provide for the family and earn a living in that field.

However, Eleuthère understood the importance of building ‘rare skills’ as Cal Newport would say in “So Good They Can’t Ignore You“. In France, he put his passion to the side and apprenticed with Antoine Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry who ran the French government’s gunpowder mills and development. These rare chemistry skills proved incredibly valuable to build the foundation of the DuPont company and later give Eleuthère incredible autonomy and wealth. In fact, it even allowed him to build an incredible legacy of gardening far beyond his own lifetime.

The gardens Eleuthère built on the Brandywine Creek were a place of great peace for the early employees of DuPont, and to this day, one can enjoy the beautiful acreages that remain at the original mills. Eleuthère wrote to a friend upon arrival in the US that “being without a garden was the greatest deprivation” he faced. But, by using his rare skills in chemistry and experience in gunpowder, as opposed to pursuing his passion, he was able to create the garden life he wanted with hundreds of species of plants from around the world and influenced the generations of DuPont family that followed to create gardens around the US including Winterhur and Longwood Gardens. Entire books have been written about Eleuthère’s passion for gardening.

Eleuthère didn’t just ignore his passion, but focused first on creating rare skills that were valuable in order to follow the passion projects he wanted that would inspire generations. The tight community he built in DuPont helped the company weather hard times in the world’s most dangerous manufacturing industry and would eventually make the family the richest in the world, for better or for worse. Finally, Eleuthère’s focus on quality product eventually drove DuPont to be the largest and most valuable chemical company in the world. In fact, the chemical industry drove innovation in the US more than any other industry in the 20th century, as 26% of all American research and development labs in existence before 1950 were formed in the chemical industry.

References:

https://www.sciencehistory.org/historical-profile/eleuthere-irenee-du-ponthttps://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-researcher-dupont-helped-nazi-germany-out-of-ideology-1.7186636
Gunpowder, Ingenuity, Madness, Murder: The sage of the du ponts by Melissa Burdick HarmonIndustrial Revolutionaries: The Making of the Modern World 1776-1914 by Gavin WeightmanEleuthère Irénée du Pont: Salem Press Biographical Encyclopedia, 2018. 4p.E.I. du Pont, Botaniste by Norman B. Wilkinson
https://hbr.org/2018/06/in-praise-of-extreme-moderation
https://www.hagley.org/e-i-du-pont-garden
https://www.calnewport.com/books/so-good/