Finding Aids

Eleuthère Irénée du Pont (1771-1834), founder of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., and Sophie Madeleine Dalmas du Pont (1775-1828) had four daughters. This group of materials within the Winterthur Manuscripts collection contains the papers of the three eldest: Victorine (du Pont) Bauduy (1792-1861), Evelina (du Pont) Bidermann (1796-1863), and Eleuthera (du Pont) Smith (1806-1876), as well as their respective husbands: Ferdinand Bauduy (1791-1814), James Antoine Bidermann (1790-1865), and Thomas MacKie Smith (1809-1852). Victorine du Pont Bauduy and Eleuthera du Pont Smith were teachers at the Brandywine Manufacturers' Sunday School (BMSS), a nonsectarian school offering classes in reading, writing, arithmetic, and Bible lessons. Evelina du Pont Bidermann spent much of her adult life traveling alongside her husband and then building the Winterthur mansion in Delaware. Their papers document details about their education, social life, family, attitudes, and activities through incoming and outgoing correspondence, as well as personal papers such as diaries and account books.

Emma E. Holmes (1838-1910) was the daughter of Dr. Henry M. Holmes (1790-1854) and Eliza Ford Gibbes (1808-1875). The diary chronicles Holmes's life in Charleston, South Carolina, during the Civil War, detailing the Charleston fire of December 1861, visiting army camps, taking a position as governess and tutor, and plundering Union troops near the end of the war.

Henry Belin du Pont (1898-1970) was a research engineer with General Motors and the vice president of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company from 1939 to 1963. This collection contains correspondence from several generations of the family from the early nineteenth through the twentieth century, including Francis Gurney Smith (1784-1873), Elizabeth (Eliza) MacKie Smith (1787-1861), Joanna Smith du Pont (1815-1876), Frances du Pont Coleman (1838-1902), Eleuthera "Ella" du Pont Bradford (1848-1906), Eleuthera Bradford du Pont (1873-1953), Alicia Bradford Maddox (1875-1920) and Phoebe George Bradford (1794-1840).

Martha Brown Ogle Callender Forman (1788-1864) was the second wife of Gen. Thomas Marsh Forman (1758-1845). Her diaries are entirely personal, with many details of the daily life of enslavers and the enslaved at Rose Hill, a Cecil County, Maryland plantation.

Thomas H. Savery (1837-1910) was president of Pusey, Jones and Company, a shipbuilder and papermaking machinery manufacturer in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1864 he married Sarah Pim Savery (1837-1928). This collection consists of ther business and personal papers of Thomas H. Savery, primarily related to his papermaking machinery ventures, and twenty-nine diaries of Sarah Pim Savery.