Alexis I. du Pont (1816-1857) was proprieter of his family's business, E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, which began in the manufacture of gunpowder in 1802. Betweeen 1829 and 1931, he attended the boarding school New Haven Gymnasium to prepare for his higher education at the University of Pennsylvania. The volume is an autograph book of mostly blank pages. Internal evidence suggests that it was begun by his older siblings as a memento for him when he first left home for school as he entered his teens. Later, Alexis du Pont used the same volume to collect samples of poetry verses on the theme of "friendship" as mementos of his schoolmates when he left preparatory school and entered college.