What Would Delaware to Delaware's Winterthur Mansion?

At our hotel in Maryland, I picked up a tourist magazine for Delaware, which Julie perused looking for what we might do before checking into our home away from home there at 3:30 PM.
The real question wasn't "What would Delaware?"

After all, it was Friday, so granddaughter Emma would obviously choose to wear her French fry shirt, and we don't know anyone named Della.

The question was one that daughter Gina had been reminded of by her Portuguese class, when she said she would be going to Delaware for the weekend.  "What will you do in Delaware?"  Gina played this historically significant travel video for me, recommended by her sophisticated class of academic scholars.

Perusing the "Delaware" magazine, Julie came across Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library, one of the Du Pont Family mansions.

On a personal note, the ancestors that gave us my hereditary surname immigrated from Winterthur, Switzerland, in 1854.  Only about an hour away and closer to our BnB, it seemed like an obvious choice.

We had enjoyed Pennsylvania's prominent Du Pont Mansion, Longwood Gardens, on a previous vacation.

To recap the origins of their family fortune, the Du Ponts who as Huguenots (Protestants) could not --- or perhaps I should say were far less likely to --- become full royalty in Catholic France of that era, nonetheless lived with relative privilege and earned the title de Nemours for service to the crown.  When the Catholic monarch rulers lost their heads in the French Revolution, watchmaker Pierre Du Pont de Nemours was only imprisoned and released after a month or two, but he realized the future of France was muddled to say the least.

He immigrated to America with his sons, though his wife refused to leave Europe, saying she was too old to start over.  She ended up being okay.

In America, the Du Ponts tried their hands at publishing with little success.  One of his sons, Éleuthère Irénée Du Pont, happened to be an avid hunter, and when his rifle misfired...again...due to the poor quality American gunpowder, he had an epiphany.  He had interned as a gunpowder chemist years earlier in France, and he saw that everything he needed to make a truly good gunpowder was available in Wilmington, Delaware.

There were --- and still are --- plenty of beautiful willow trees which could be burned into a fine charcoal perfect for gunpowder.  The navigable Delaware River would provide a way to bring in the other necessary elements for manufacture of gunpowder, saltpeter and sulfur.  The Brandywine River's current could be harnessed to power the factory, and the factory could be built using stones in the area.

He convinced his father to return to France to raise money using his old aristocratic connections who had squirreled away some money unfound by the ironically-named Committee of Public Safety.

From that start with a few thousand dollars of capital, DuPont became dominant as the largest and best gun powder manufacturer in the world, branching into other chemical and product innovations for both military and consumers that we have taken for granted over the decades.  A recent product you may have noticed everywhere in new building construction is Tyvek house wrapping.

That is one of the secrets of wealth.  It only grows if there continues to be innovation over the generations.

It also might be noted that in sustaining their mansions and gardens, which quite frankly are pretty excessive, they employ many working people.

I'm always amused by people who talk about how the rich should pay their "fair share" to government but never consider what exactly a rich person can do with his money.  There are only three things: spend it, save it or give it away.  These critics focus on the third, presuming the government would make better use of this rich person's money, but would they?

The Du Pont family remains very wealthy, and as a result, they are quite philanthropic, helping many worthy causes and always serving as patrons of the arts.  Their savings in banks provide capital to allow working people to borrow money to buy homes or start businesses.  In some cases, those savings take the form of investing directly in companies with good ideas for profitably serving the public, creating more wealth for themselves and others.

The "selfish" way the rich spend their money on lavish travel, yachts and mansions is the primary focus of people like AOC.  However, all of that extravagance requires working people to provide the goods and services.  Some might argue that is even more significant than giving money away, because it teaches a man to fish to eat for a lifetime rather than giving a man a fish to eat today.  All of we "little people" who learn to fish then have our own choices to spend it, save it or give it away, and in fact, most Americans have the same "luxuries" as the wealthy, but on a smaller scale.

Once again, I have digressed far from the point.  I called Winterthur to be certain they would be open, and the lady who answered said that while rain was forecast for the afternoon, and rain could shut down the open-sided tram ride through the gardens, the skies were blue with fluffy clouds at that moment.

We drove through Maryland and into Delaware, past the beautiful willow trees and stone houses on a winding route that "avoided toll roads."

We are so blessed to live in such a gorgeous world and to actually be able to appreciate it.  Never forget that!

Tickets were $18 for seniors and $6 for Emma, and after a ten minute wait for the tram to fill, our driver wound through the 60-acre natural gardens, describing the different plants and follies we passed, mixing in some tidbits about history of the estate.

The name Winterthur (pronounced Wintertour), we learned, was the hometown of E.I. Du Pont's son-in-law, Jacques Antoine Bidermann, who was a valuable DuPont executive helping E.I. and his sons run the rapidly growing company.

The mansion and gardens kept the name Winterthur as it expanded over the generations under Du Pont control, culminating with H.F. Du Pont, who when asked what he did called himself the Master Gardener.  It is a natural garden filled with flora that blooms at different parts of the year, so that, as our guides said, it can completely change in appearance over the course of a few days.

After twisting through other gorgeous sections, we got off the tram at the Enchanted Woods, the area built for the Du Pont children and can now be enjoyed by all.

It was the perfect place for Emma to run around, so much so that we wound up missing our 1 PM museum tour by 40 minutes.

No problem.

Another tour left at 2 PM, so with a few minutes to spare, we went into the touch museum for kids, where Emma and I played with some old fashioned toys like ball and cup on a stick and then sipped pretend tea.

The tour itself focused on the furnishings and American art objects, plus some interesting stories about the people who lived there.

H.F. Du Pont had passions for gardening and his cattle, which provided not only flowers but the mansion's food.  In pursuing his cattle obsession, he visited a friend in Vermont who also raised cattle but was primarily interested in American artwork.

Upon that lady's death, she donated a curio cabinet filled with plates to Winterthur Museum, because that exact display is said to have been what motivated H.F. to begin his collection of over 90,000 items.

H.F. bought entire houses so that he could preserve the walls that he though represented colonial homes, and then dismantled them to rebuild the finest rooms in his mansion.  They were filled with furniture of the suitable era.

There are also some great paintings, including a famous original of American founding fathers negotiating with the British, with the British being noticeably missing.  It turns out they never showed up to sit for the painting, so that's the way it remains to this day.

The Du Ponts weren't true royalty in Europe, but in America, none are limited to a caste by virtue of birth.  We are all free to rise to the level our individual talents and ambitions will take us.

The Du Ponts became essentially American royalty.

What did that mean?

They could live their live pursuing whatever interested them.  H.F. Du Pont had his passions for cattle, gardening, collecting American colonial arts and crafts, and playing Bridge.

In addition to being the Master Gardener, H.F. might have been called the Interior Decorator in Chief.  Beyond putting together antiques in rooms in ways meant to impress guests whose own interests made them appreciative of his touches, he would choose exactly which dining service to use based on the flowers in bloom. Martha Stewart had nothing on him.

His wife spent most of her time making social arrangements for visitors to come to the mansion for long weekends where guests would be able to ride horses, play tennis, golf on the private course, stroll through nature or swim before meeting for tea time in the afternoon, cocktail hour, dinner and, of course, Bridge, which they would play until well after midnight.  All elements required specific plans, including menus from which guests could choose breakfast before retiring, as the cooks needed to get a good night's sleep.

Now they may have served more gourmet fare, and there were servants to carry out the details, but isn't that pretty much what we do for our own guests when we enjoy time together?

Despite all luxuries, of course, we all succumb to the inevitable eventually, and rather than passing this estate onto their children, Winterthur went into a trust for the benefit of the public, allowing those with interest to see the beauty for ourselves while sustaining the property for posterity.