Bessie Gardner du Pont (1864-1949) wrote several publications on the du Pont family and E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co's history. She was the daughter of Dorsey Gardner (1842-1894), a scholarly editor, author, and etymologist, and Margaretta Potts Gardner. She spent most of her youth in New Haven, Connecticut, where her father was a Yale faculty member. In 1887, she married her cousin, Alfred Irenee du Pont (1864-1935), and they had four children. The couple divorced in 1906.

Du Pont became interested in the du Pont family history and by 1900 was copying and translating early family and company documents. At the suggestion of her cousin-by-marriage, Pierre S. du Pont (1870-1954), she wrote a history of the company, E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, a history, 1802-1902, published in 1920. Her second publication, National Education in the United States of America (1923), is a translation of the 1812 edition of Pierre S. du Pont de Nemours's writing. Her major publication, Life of Eleuthere Irene du Pont from Contemporary Correspondence (1923-1927, eleven volumes and index), is a collection of selected letters and papers. Her other publications are Lives of Victor and Josephine du Pont (1923) and Du Pont de Nemours, 1789-1817 (1933, two volumes).