Victorine du Pont: The Force behind the Family [Hardcover]

Victorine Elizabeth du Pont, the first child of Eleuthère Irénée du Pont and his wife Sophie, was seven years old when her family emigrated to America, where her father established the humble beginnings of what would become a corporate giant. Through correspondence with friends and relatives from the ages of eight to sixty-eight, Victorine unwittingly chronicled the first sixty years of the du Pont saga in America. As she recovered from personal tragedy, she became first tutor of her siblings and relations. This biography makes the case that Victorine has had the broadest—and most enduring—influence within the entire du Pont family of any family member. The intellectual heir of her venerable grandfather, Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours, although Victorine grew up in an age where women's opportunities were limited, her pioneering efforts in education, medicine, and religion transformed an entire millworkers’ community.
               
 Victorine du Pont is the previously untold biography of a woman who left a profound influence upon multiple generations of the du Pont family, and whose story provides the most intimate view of that family to date. Intellectually capable and actively compassionate, Victorine du Pont overcame personal tragedy and institutional barriers against women to provide pioneering educational opportunities, as well as spiritual leadership, to an entire millworkers’ community. 

Lennie Spitale lives in Garnet Valley, Pennsylvania, with his wife Gwen. Since 2009, he has been a volunteer at the Hagley Museum and Library in Greenville, Delaware, the site of the original DuPont powder works established in 1802. Lennie’s primary work has been to the incarcerated, with whom he has served as a prison minister since 1977, in approximately 150 correctional facilities in several states and Canada. As an educator, hels0