Finding Aids

Hagley Museum staff conducted a series oral history interviews between 1954 and 1990, speaking primarily with individuals who had worked at the DuPont Company powder yards on Brandywine Creek during the yards’ final decades of operation or who had lived near the yards as spouses or children of DuPont Co. workers. Some of the individuals who were interviewed donated, lent for copying, or provided information on the photographs in this collection. The images primarily depict the worker communities which surrounded the E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company powder yards on Brandywine Creek or the powder yards themselves.

Donald Robert Hull (1911-1995) was a longtime employee at the DuPont Company mainly working with nylon and textile fibers. The collection consists of four scrapbook albums of material from Donald Hull's career with the Du Pont Company.

E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company was established in 1802 by Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours (1739-1817) and his son Éleuthère Irénée du Pont (1771-1834). This collection of more than 1250 discrete photographs depicts the landscape and buildings at or near the company's explosives manufacturing plants along Brandywine Creek near Wilmington, Delaware. Approximately 900 images depict powder yard sites, including the DuPont Experimental Station, either during the mills' final decades of operation or prior to, during, and after excavation and restoration work on the site in the 1950s and 1960s. Most of the remaining images depict the worker communities which surrounded the powder yards.

Lavoisier Library is the library at the DuPont Company's Experimental Station, a large industrial research facility focused on innovative advancements in chemistry located in Wilmington, Delaware. The Lavoisier Library was established in 1917. This collection consists of images from the DuPont Company's Lavoisier Library: primarily of employees and interior views of the library. There are materials that document the history of the organization of the library, the development of the physical building, and library employee's work. There are a few group and individual photographs of DuPont Company employees.

E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company was established in 1802 by Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours (1739-1817) and his son Éleuthère Irénée du Pont (1771-1834). In 1903 the DuPont Company's Executive Committee established the Experimental Station, a research facility located on the banks of the Brandywine Creek across from DuPont's first black powder works. This collection contains photographs of general views of the Experimental Station showing its growth over time.

The DuPont Company's Executive Committee established the Experimental Station, a research facility located on the banks of the Brandywine Creek across from DuPont's first black powder works. The panoramic photograph provides an overview of the DuPont Company Experimental Station and Country Club, outside of Wilmington, Delaware. It shows temporary structures and construction for expansion of the Experimental Station.

The DuPont Experimental Station is a large industrial research facility founded in 1903; focused on chemistry research. An aerial view of the DuPont Company's Experimental Station taken in 1987.

E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company is a chemical company more commonly referred to as the DuPont company. The company was established in 1802 by Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours (1739-1817) and his son Éleuthère Irénée du Pont (1771-1834) the company began with the production of gunpowder. Established in 1903, the Experimental Station is a research facility located on the banks of the Brandywine Creek across from DuPont's first black powder works. This collection contains three documentary photographs of both sides of the lower gates of the DuPont Company Experimental Station.

E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company was established in 1802 by Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours (1739-1817) and his son Éleuthère Irénée du Pont (1771-1834). The du Ponts purchased a mill site on the banks of the Brandywine River just North of Wilmington, Delaware. The pulp keg mill, after the powder yards closed, was used for record storage by the DuPont Company. (Currently, it is a Hagley Museum and Library property, the Hall of Records.) In 1903, the DuPont Company's Executive Committee established the Experimental Station, a research facility located on the banks of the Brandywine Creek across from the du Pont's first black powder works. This collection consists of photographs and negatives from the DuPont Company's Secretary's Department showing the Hall of Records at various times and one aerial view of the Experimental Station.

The DuPont Experimental Station is a large industrial research facility founded in 1903; focused on chemistry research. This collection consists primarily of group photographs of new employees in the Central Research Department at DuPont's Experimental Station in Wilmington, Delaware for the years 1922 to 1959. All individuals pictured are identified.

Herny S. Rothrock (1906-1986) was a DuPont research chemist. In 1930, he joined the staff of the Experimental Station of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company. He obtained fifty-six patents, chiefly in the field of polymer chemistry and served ten years at liaison manager in the Central Research Department, retiring in 1971. This collection consists primarily of photos relating to DuPont's Experimental Station in Wilmington, Delaware. There are group photos of new employees in the Central Research Department, committees and conferences and press release photos from the 1964 New York World's Fair.

James R. Thomen (1926-) was manager of the Experimental Station from 1975 to 1985 when he retired. The DuPont Company's Experimental initially, was to be a small laboratory to screen inventions which were coming into the company from outside independent inventors specifically for research on black powder, smokeless powder, and dynamite, but soon its mission was altered and it became a large industrial research facility focused on innovative advancements in chemistry. This collection consists primarily of photographs of buildings at the Experimental Station in Wilmington, Delaware taken between 1910 and 1950.

Wallace Hume Carothers (1896-1937) was chemist and inventor of Neoprene artificial rubber and Nylon synthetic fiber. He worked as a chemist in E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company's Fundamental Research Program from 1928 until his death in 1937. This collection contains five interviews conducted in July and August of 1978 with Wallace Carothers’s friends and colleagues. The interviewees primarily share stories and focus on their feelings surrounding Carothers’s personality, work, and suicide.