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ABSTRACT
Eighteenth-century events, replete with Dickensian dualities, brought two Enlightenment families to America. Pierre-Samuel du Pont and Joseph Priestley contemplated relocating their families decades before immigrating. After arriving, they discovered deficiencies in education and chemistry. Their experiences were indicative of the challenges in transmitting transatlantic chemistry. The Priestleys were primed to found an American chemical legacy. Science connected Priestley to British manufacturers, Continental chemists, and American statesmen. Priestley's marriage into the Wilkinson ironmaster dynasty, and Lunar Society membership, helped his sons apprentice, and befriend manufacturer-chemist Thomas Cooper. However, ideological persecution forced them from England. Priestley's plans for his sons to inherit Wilkinson's ironworks evaporated; in America, efforts to establish manufactories, colonies, farms, and a college miscarried. Cooper taught college chemistry, but his materialism provoked dismissals. The Du Ponts were unlikely founders of an industrial-chemistry empire. Du Pont's philosophy promulgated that agriculture, not industry, produced wealth. Eleuthère-Irénée apprenticed in France's gunpowder administration, however, plans for his succession died and director Antoine Lavoisier, a family friend, was executed. E.-I. and Du Pont's arrest precipitated relocation to America. Du Pont's utopian colony and schemes proved unrealistic. Nevertheless, E.-I.'s gunpowder manufactory—utilizing transatlantic contacts and privileged knowledge of advanced French chemistry—succeeded through practical application.
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the kind attention and insightful feedback of John Christie. A draft of this paper was first presented at the Cain Conference 2017: Chemistry in the Americas, 1500-1800, organized by Christie and Carin Berkowitz, hosted by the Chemical Heritage Foundation (now Science History Institute). This support, and that of fellow participants, was critical. I would also like to thank the archivists and staff of Hagley Museum & Library (especially Carol Lockman) for a Grant-in-Aid on my first research visit and renewed hospitably on my return in 2017. Access to the collections and assistance from the Archives & Heritage Services and staff of Birmingham Central Library (now the Library of Birmingham), as well as Tom Bresenham and the Joseph Priestley House staff, was crucial for my research.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 MS The Thomas Jefferson Papers at the Library of Congress (TJPLC): Series 1: Genral Correspondence, 18153. T. Jefferson (Philadelphia) to J. Priestley, 27 January 1800 <https://www.loc.gov/item/mtjbib009272/> [accessed 18 March 2013]
2 On 1 October 1799 the du Pont family embarked on the American Eagle, from Ile de Ré France, landing at Newport Rhode Island, before arriving at New York on 12 January 1800. Wilmington, Hagley Library, MS Winterthur Du Pont de Nemours Correspondence (DPDN) 2/A/3 Winterthur 2–589. P.-S. du Pont (New York) à J-A. Gautier (Londres), 26 pluviôse de l’année 8 (15 février 1800) [Draft].
3 MS TJPLC 18153. T. Jefferson (Philadelphia) to J. Priestley, 27 January 1800. Du Pont dated his letter on 20 January, making his expected arrival about a week after Jefferson wrote to Priestley. Ibid.; MS TJPLC 18145. P.-S. du Pont de Nemours (Good-stay. Bergen-Point, near New York) à T. Jefferson, 20 janvier 1800 <https://www.loc.gov/resource/mtj1.022_0039_0040/?sp=1> [accessed 18 March 2013]
4 MS TJPLC 18142. T. Jefferson (Philadelphia) to J. Priestley, 18 January 1800 <https://www.loc.gov/resource/mtj1.022_0034_0036/?sp=1> [accessed 18 March 2013]
5 MS TJPLC 18158. J. Priestley (Northumberland) to T. Jefferson, 30 January 1800 <https://www.loc.gov/resource/mtj1.022_0053_0054/?sp=1> [accessed 18 March 2013]
6 MS DPDN C. 2/A/12 MS W2-2374. T. Jefferson (Philadelphia) to P.-S. du Pont, 12 April 1800.
7 MS TJPLC 16633.J. Adams (Philadelphia) to T. Jefferson, 11 May 1794 <https://www.loc.gov/resource/mtj1.020_0101_0102/?sp=2> [accessed 20 March 2013]. On 3 June 1794, Henry Wansey met Adams in New York and recorded that Adams desired Priestley be informed that Adams’ ‘should be glad to see him at Boston’ which ‘he thought better calculated for him than any other part of America, and that he would find himself very well received if he should be inclined to settle there’. Henry Wansey, The Journey of an Excursion to the United States of North America in the Summer of 1794 (Salisbury: J. Easton, 1796), p. 96.
8 Robert E. Schofield, The Enlightened Joseph Priestley: A Study of His Life and Work from 1773 to 1804 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), pp. 328–39.
9 J. Adams (Quincy) to Timothy Pickering, 16 September 1798. Founders Online, National Archives <https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-2985> [accessed 20 November 2017]
10 Robert E. Schofield, The Enlightenment of Joseph Priestley: A Study of His Life and Work from 1733 to 1773 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), pp. 1–145; Jan Golinski, Science as Public Culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 1760–1820 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 63–65.
11 Schofield, The Enlightened Joseph Priestley, pp. 3–12.
12 Joseph Priestley, The Doctrine of Phlogiston Established and that of the Composition of Water Refuted, 2nd edn (Northumberland: P. Byrne, 1803), p. 116.
13 Schofield, The Enlightened Joseph Priestley, pp. 5–7, 105, 170–71; Jean-Pierre Poirier, Lavoisier: Chemist, Biologist, Economist (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), pp. 74–75.
14 Joseph Priestley, Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air, 6 vols (London: J. Johnson, 1774–86), II (1775), p. 212.
15 This already included Jean Hyacinth De Magellan (1722–90) of Portugal. In France Priestley met, in addition to Lavoisier, Trudaine de Montigny (1733–77), Jean-Baptiste Le Roy (1720–1800), and Jacques Gibelin (1744–1828). Schofield, The Enlightened Joseph Priestley, p. 122.
16 William was likely born 1744. In the early 1760s, the ‘Old’ Bersham Company (consisting of Isaac, John, and Liverpool merchants) was restructured into the ‘New’ company. William Henry Chaloner, ‘Isaac Wilkinson, Potfounder’, in Studies in the Industrial Revolution, ed. by L. S. Pressnell (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1960), pp. 23–51; William Henry Chaloner, ‘Dr. Joseph Priestley, John Wilkinson and the French Revolution, 1789–1802’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 8 (1958), 21–30 (pp. 22–23).
17 Ibid., p. 23.
18 Ibid.; John R. Harris, Industrial Espionage and Technology Transfer: Britain and France in the Eighteenth Century (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), pp. 248–50.
19 Birmingham, Birmingham Central Library, MS James Watt Papers (JWP) 3219/4/123 J. Watt snr (Birmingham) to May Curry, 30 May 1784.
20 Harris, pp. 244–61; Chaloner, ‘Dr. Joseph Priestley’, p. 23.
21 Ibid., pp. 22–24.
22 On the Lunar Society’s involvement in chemistry in this period see: Joseph Priestley, Memoirs of Dr. Joseph Priestley, to the Year 1795, Written By Himself: With a Continuation, to the Time of His Decease By His Son Joseph Priestley; and Observations on His Writings by Thomas Cooper … and the Rev. William Christie, 2 vols (London: J. Johnson, 1806–07), I (1806), p. 97; Robert E. Schofield, The Lunar Society of Birmingham: A Social History of Provincial Science and Industry in Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), pp. 179–300; Golinski, pp. 56–70.
23 P.-S. du Pont (Paris) à B. Franklin, 10 mai 1768. The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. by William B. Willcox and others, 41 vols (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959–2014), XV (1972), 118–20 (p. 118).
24 Ibid.
25 B. Franklin (London) to P.-S. du Pont, 28 July 1768. Ibid., pp. 181–82.
26 Ambrose Saricks, Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours (Lawrence: The University of Kansas Press, 1965), pp. 45–58; James L. McLain, The Economic Writings of Du Pont de Nemours (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1977), pp. 60–124, 218–25. The books full title was Physiocratie, ou constitution naturelle du gouvernement le plus avantageux au genre humain.
27 Jessica Riskin, Science in the Age of Sensibility: The Sentimental Empiricists of the French Enlightenment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), pp. 114–37.
28 French gunpowder suffered shortages in the quality and quantity of saltpetre, its primary component. France relied on foreign gunpowder in the Seven Years War (1756–63), creating excessive costs. These were factors in France suing for premature peace at unfavourable terms, thereby ending access to saltpetre from India. Lavoisier became involvement through his role in the Ferme général, a stockholding company, he bought into in 1768. Indirect taxes farmed out to this monopoly earned it great profit from salt, tobacco, and alcohol taxes. Lavoisier – charged with uncovering salt tax evasion – inspected saltpetre production, of which salt was a by-product. The Ferme des poudres, also a private stock company, held a monopoly at six-year terms on production and sale of gunpowder and saltpetre. Lavoisier, dismayed by a expensive and corrupt system that did not improve saltpetre quality, encouraged national production to ensure sufficient supply in the royal Paris Arsenal. Turgot thus had Lavoisier, Du Pont, and Henri François d’Omersson (1751–1808) organize the creation of the Régie des poudres to improve gunpowder quality. Pierre-Samuel du Pont, Mémoires sur la vie et les ouvrages de m. Turgot, ministre d’État (Paris, 1782), pp. 75–88; Édouard Grimaux, Lavoisier, 1743–1794, d’après sa correspondance, ses manuscript, ses papiers de famille et d’autres documents (Paris: Alcan, 1888), pp. 82–96; Madison Smartt Bell, Lavoisier in the Year One: The Birth of a New Science in an Age of Revolution (London: Norton, 2005), pp. 21–23; Poirier, pp. 84–94.
29 Du Pont, Mémoires sur la vie et les ouvrages de m. Turgot, pp. 84–92.
30 Poirier, pp. 89–94; Bell, Lavoisier in the Year One, pp. 22–24; Du Pont, Memoires sur la vie et les ouvrages de m. Turgot, pp. 84–88.
31 Maurice Crosland, ‘Research Schools of Chemistry from Lavoisier to Wurtz’, The British Society for the History of Science, 36 (2003), 333–61 (p. 338).
32 Viel Claude, ‘Le salon et le laboratoire de Lavoisier à l’Arsenal, cenacle ou s’élabora la nouvelle chimie’, Revue d’histoire de la pharmacie, 83 (1995), 255–66 (pp. 255–60).
33 Ibid., p. 256; Crosland, p. 336.
34 Ibid., p. 339.
35 Ibid., pp. 333–40; Claude, pp. 255–64; Marco Beretta, ‘Between the Workshop and the Laboratory: Lavoisier’s Network of Instrument Makers’, Osiris, 29 (2014), 197–214 (pp. 209–12).
36 50. J. Priestley (Leeds) to R. Price, 21 July 1772. Priestley, A Scientific Autobiography, 105–08 (p. 106).
37 J. Winthrop (Cambridge New England) to B. Franklin, 4 March 1773. Franklin, The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, XX (1976), 90–95 (p. 90).
38 J. Priestley (London) to B. Franklin, 11 March 1779. Franklin, The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, IXXX (1996), p. 99. Franklin contemplated this whilst in France, revealed in a note, titled ‘Dr Priestley’, with Franklin’s draft letter to Priestley on the ‘rapid Progress true Science now makes’, and the unimaginable heights and improvements it would make in a millennia for transport, agriculture, and medicine. Franklin’s note states that he had ideas of an American college for Priestley, as no one was more useful in educating youth, but ‘Unpleasantnesses’ would include a dangerous voyage for his young family and diminished time for experiments. B. Franklin (Passy) to J. Priestley, 8 February 1780. Ibid., XXXI (1975), pp. 455–56.
39 Chaloner, ‘Dr. Joseph Priestley’, p. 23; Schofield, The Enlightened Joseph Priestley, pp. 147–68.
40 Priestley singled out three Lunar men for their chemistry skill – James Watt, James Keir (1735–1820), and William Withering (1741–99) – and added that they ‘dined together every month’ with Matthew Boulton, Erasmus Darwin (before his move to Derby), Samuel Galton junior (1753–1832), and later Robert Augustus Johnson (1745–99). Priestley, Memoirs of Dr. Joseph Priestley, I (1806), p. 97.
41 31. J. Priestley (Birmingham) to J. Wilkinson (Montcenis), 16 June 1784. Priestley, Scientific Correspondence, pp. 71–73.
42 Geneva, Bibliothètque de Genève (BGE) MS Suppl 1040 144–55 Lettres de Jean Senebier. J. Priestley (London) to J. Senebier (Geneva), 17 April 1784. They discussed chemical experiments and exchanged works. Senebier sent Recherch su l’influence de la lumière solaire (1783), on his experiments revealing sunlight’s role in changing fixed air through plants to pure air. Priestley asked Senebier for his views on Lavoisier’s experiments and sent materials by Joseph and James Watt junior to Geneva. Ibid., ff. 144–55. J. Priestley (Birmingham) to J. Senebier (Bibliothécaire à Genève), 24 November 1783–11 September 1785.
43 Chaloner, ‘Dr. Joseph Priestley’, p. 24; Schofield, The Enlightened Joseph Priestley, p. 315.
44 MS JWP W/13 11. J. Priestley snr (Birmingahm) to J. Watt snr (Heathfield), 6 January 1791.
45 Cooper was among the manufacturers in Manchester to pioneer early chlorine bleaching and worked on chemical dyeing processes. He was influenced by French and German writings on chemistry and undertook his own chemical experiments. In 1789, Priestley and Watt supported Cooper’s application as a Fellow of the Royal Society, but it failed. Seymour C. Cohen, ‘The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Cooper: A Previously Unpublished Manuscript of Dumas Malone’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 147 (2003), 39–64 (p. 54, n. 51); Albert Edward Musson and Eric Robinson, Science and Technology in the Industrial Revolution (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), pp. 347–48.
46 MS Muirhead IV Box 7, P. J. Priestley jnr (Birmingham) to J. Watt jnr (Manchester), 18 February 1791. 99. J. Priestley (Birmingham) to T. Lindsey (London), 18 February 1791. ‘The Letters of Joseph Priestley to Theophilus Lindsey 1769–1794’, ed. by Simon Mills. The Queen Mary Centre for Religion and Literature in English <http://www.qmulreligionandliterature.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/099.1791.02.18.pdf> [accessed 22 April 2017]. MS JWP 3219/4/124 J. Watt snr (Heathfield) to William Matthews, 3 July 1791.
47 Russell (Unitarian, political reformer, and successful manufacturer) also had his house destroyed in the riots, and moved his family to America in 1794. Schofield, The Enlightened Joseph Priestley, pp. 316–18; Tony Rail, ‘William Priestley Vindicated, with a Previously Unpublished Letter’, Enlightenment and Dissent, 28 (2012), 150–95 (pp. 153–54). Graham, Revolutionary in Exile, pp. 21–24.
48 Joseph informed Watt junior that he was considering moving to France, which had a better climate and would be ‘near the centre of action for years to come’, but acknowledged: ‘Language, manners, & disposition of the peoples together with certainty of success within agriculture, manufactures & commerce of rank if favour of America. Cooper, Walker, and all here prefer America which surprises me’. MS Muirhead IV Box 7, P. J. Priestley jnr (Manchester) to J. Watt jnr, 8 May 1793. The Priestley’s interest in America was briefly overshadowed by events in France. Within two months of the Birmingham Riots, Priestley contemplated moving to France, receiving invitations to settle in Paris and southern France. In 1792, William Wilkinson took William Priestley to Paris. He was received at the Assemblée nationale, in honour of his father, receiving French citizenship, which was later extended to Priestley, who was elected to the Convention nationale. War between Britain and France led the Priestleys to choose America in 1793. Schofield, The Enlightened Joseph Priestley, p. 318; Graham, Revolutionary in Exile, pp. 21–29.
49 P.-S. du Pont to Charles Gravier de Vergennes, 30 May 1776. Orville T. Murphy, ‘DuPont de Nemours and the Anglo-French Commercial Treaty of 1786’, The Economic History Review, 19, no. 3 (1966), 569–80 (pp. 569–71).
50 Ibid., pp. 569–74.
51 P.-S. du Pont to C. G. de Vergennes, 16 March 1783, quoted in Ibid., p. 574.
52 Mack Thompson, ‘Causes and Circumstances of the Du Pont Family’s Emigration’, French Historical Studies, 6 (Spring 1969), 59–77 (pp. 62–64).
53 MS Longwood – 1 10 DPDN. P.-S. du Pont (Paris) à E. I. du Pont, 22 mars 1785. This was probably ‘Mémoires sur la poudre’, an undated manuscript signed ‘Du Pont’. It details the six forms of gunpowder made in France, detonation methods, gunpowder composition, and the utility of its manufacture. John Beverly Riggs, A Guide to the Manuscripts in the Eleutherian Mills Historical Library: Accessions through the year 1965 (Greenville: Eleutherian Mills Historical Library, 1970), p. 743.
54 MS Winterthur 2-585 DPDN C. P.-S. du Pont (Good-stay near New York) à T. Jefferson, 14 novembre 1800.
55 Du Pont reported this to Victor in 1789. Patrice Bret, ‘Lavoisier à la régie des poudres: Le savant, le fancier, l’adminitrateur et le pedagogue’, La Vie des Sciences, Comptes rendus de L’Académie des sciences. Série générale 11 (1994), 309–16 (pp. 297–317); Darwin H. Stapleton, ‘Élève des Poudres: E.I. du Pont’s Multiple Transfers of French Technology’, in Gunpowder, Explosives and the State: A Technological History, ed. by Brenda J. Buchanan (Burlington: Ashgate, 2006), 230–38 (p. 230).
56 MS Longwood 1–39. P. S. du Pont à E. I. du Pont, 17 fevrier [1789]; Ibid. 40. P. S. du Pont à E. I. du Pont. 26 mars 1789; Ibid. 42. P. S. du Pont (Versailles) à E. I. du Pont, 16 May 1789.
57 MS Longwood – 1 49 DPDN. P. S. du Pont (Paris) to E. I. du Pont, 15 November 1789.
58 Du Pont’s wife, Nicole-Charlotte-Marie (1743–84), had died in 1784. Such affairs were common in contemporary Paris. Poirier, pp. 125–27; Bell, Lavoisier in the Year One, pp. 122–23.
59 MS Longwood – 1 49 DPDN. P. S. du Pont (Paris) to E. I. du Pont, 15 November 1789. ‘Mr. David’ may have been Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), celebrated painter and close friend of the Lavoisiers, who served as Mme Lavoisier’s art instructor. Bell, Lavoisier in the Year One, p. 14; Poirier, p. 95.
60 MS JWP 3219/4/124 J. Watt snr (Birmingham) to J.-A. Deluc, 19 July 1791. For an account of riots see R. B. Rose, ‘The Priestley Riots of 1791’, Past & Present, 18 (1960), 68–88. In 1791 and 1794, mobs targeted John Wilkinson’s Bradley ironworks, but he mounted defences with men using cannon, pikes as well as swivel and howitzer guns. MS JWP Box V. 30. J. Watt snr (Birmingham) to M. Boulton (London), 23 May 1794; Chaloner, ‘Dr. Joseph Priestley’, pp. 26–27.
61 98. J. Priestley to T. Lindsey (London). 13 February 1791. ‘The Letters of Joseph Priestley’, The Queen Mary Centre <http://www.qmulreligionandliterature.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/098.1791.02.13.pdf> [accessed 22 April 2017]
62 Chaloner, ‘Dr. Joseph Priestley’, p. 26; Robinson, ‘An English Jacobin’, pp. 350–51.
63 MS JWP 3219/4/13/31 J. Watt jnr (Paris) to J. Watt snr (London), 22 April 1792.
64 Priestley’s letter was to Frédéric de La Rochefoucault-Liancourt (1747–1827). Liancourt introduced them to Lavoisier, who hosted them at his house along with leading French chemists, including Jean Michel Moreau (1741–1814), Antoine-François de Fourcroy (1755–1809), and Jean-Henri Hassenfratz (1755–1827). MS JWP 3219/4/13/30 J. Watt jnr (Paris) to J. Watt snr (Birmingham), 22 March 1792.
65 MS JWP 3219/4/124 J. Watt snr to J. Black, 23 November 1791.
66 MS JWP 3219/4/13/8 J. Watt jnr (Naples) to J. Watt snr (Birmingham), 20 May 1793, Ibid. 3219/4/124 J. Watt snr (Heathfield) to J. Watt jnr, 17 July 1793.
67 MS JWP 3219/4/124 James Watt snr (Birmingham) to J. Watt jnr, 17 July 1793.
68 J. Priestley (London) to J. Morse, 24 August 1793. Quoted in Mary Cathryne Park, ‘Joseph Priestley and the Problem of Pantisocracy’, Proceedings of the Delaware County Institute of Science, 11 (1947), 1–60 (p. 16). Original MS from Manuscript Division of New York Historical Society.
69 Chaloner, ‘Dr. Joseph Priestley’, p. 35; Graham, Revolutionary in Exile, pp. 32–33 n. 102. Priestley wrote that Joseph was ‘to look out for a settlement for themselves’ and once it was effected Priestley would ‘join them, to end my days with you’. J. Priestley (Clapton) J. Adams, 20 August 1793. Founders Online <https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-1470> [accessed 28 June 2017]
70 William arrived in America early in 1793. Ibid; Schofield, The Enlightened Joseph Priestley, p. 318; Rail, 150–95 (pp. 157–59).
71 They crossed the Atlantic from Gravesend, England (24 August 1793), and reached Philadelphia in October. 112. J. Priestley (Clapton) to T. Lindsey, 23 August 1793. ‘The Letters of Joseph Priestley’, The Queen Mary Centre <http://www.qmulreligionandliterature.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/112.1793.08.23.pdf> [accessed 22 April 2017]; Wansey, The Journey of an Excursion, p. 76; Thomas Cooper, Some Information Respecting America (London: J. Johnson, 1794), pp. 24–25, 85.
72 MS Muirhead IV Box 2, B-C. T. Cooper (Deal) to J. Watt jnr. 24 August 1793; Edmund J. White, ‘Pantiscrocy and Pennsylvania: Plans of Coleridge and Southey and of Cooper and Priestley’, Bulletin for the History of Chemistry, 30, no. 2 (2005), 70–76 (pp. 71–72); Graham, Revolutionary in Exile, p. 33.
73 Cooper, Some Information, pp. 23–29. French reformer and travel writer J.-P. Brissot (1754–93) praised the setting of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Jean-Pierre Brissot de Warville, New Travels in the United States of America: Performed in 1788 (London: J. S. Jordan, 1792), pp. 443–46. American speculator and diplomat Gilbert Imlay (1754–1828) promoted settling in Kentucky. A Topographical Description of the Western Territory of North America (London: J. Debrett, 1792).
74 MS TJPLC 18142. T. Jefferson (Philadephia) to J. Priestley, 18 January 1800 <https://www.loc.gov/resource/mtj1.022_0034_0036/?sp=1> [accessed 18 March 2013]; Graham, Revolutionary in Exile, p. 33.
75 MS Muirhead IV Box 2, B-C. T. Cooper (Philadelphia) to J. Watt jnr. 4 April 1796. Wansey, The Journey of an Excursion, p. 77; Cooper, Some Information, pp. 85–86. They were encouraged to tour and invest by John Vaughan (1756–1841) – brother of a member of the Bowood Circle Benjamin Vaughan (1751–1835) – and joined his land speculation plan. Graham, Revolutionary in Exile, p. 33.
76 Priestley, Memoirs of Dr. Joseph Priestley, I (1806), p. 166.
77 Cooper, Some Information, pp. 74–75.
78 Ibid., pp. 208–40.
79 Author’s emphasis. Tench Coxe, A View of the United States of America: In a Series of Papers, Written at Various Times, between the Years 1787 and 1794 (Philadelphia: William Hall, 1794), 364–86 (p. 386); Henry Wansey, Henry Wansey and His American Journal, 1794, ed. by David J. Jeremy (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1970), pp. 30–31, 78 n. 86. For more on Coxe involvement with the Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures see David J. Jeremy, ‘British Textile Technology Transmission to the United States: The Philadelphia Region Experience, 1770–1820’, The Business History Review, 47 (Spring 1973), 24–52 (pp. 29–32); Jacob E. Cooke, ‘Tench Coxe, Alexander Hamilton, and the Encouragement of American Manufacturers’, The William and Mary Quarterly, 32 (July, 1975), 369–92.
80 Wansey, Henry Wansey, 79 n. 86. Coxe’s work was Tench Coxe, A Brief Examination of Lord Sheffield’s Observations on the Commerce of the United States: In Seven Numbers with Two Supplementary Notes on American Manufacturers (London: J. Phillips, 1791), pp. 40–41.
81 Jean Bouchary, ‘Un manieur d’argent avant la révolution Français: Étienne Clavière d’après sa correspondance financière et politique’, Revue d’histoire économique et sociale, XXIV (1938), pp. 131–62; AML MS 1 II 477. ‘Journal brouillard de Nous Delessert & fils’, Lyon, 19 octobre 1758 à 22 juin 1761.
82 Lettre II. Etienne Clavière à J.-P. Brissot. 20 mai 1788. Jean-Pierre Brissot, Nouveau voyage dans les Etats-Unis de l’Amérique Septentrionale; fait en 1788 (Paris: Buisson, 1791), pp. 10–14.
83 Lettre III. E. Clavière à J.-P. Brissot. 21 mai 1788. Brissot, Nouveau voyage, P. 18.
84 Jeremy notes that Claviére’s plan for improved republics was the likely source. Wansey, Henry Wansey, 79, n. 86. Park credits Brissot’s Nouveau voyage, published in English in 1792, in general for the insight. Park’s important research on land company manuscripts revealed that one parcel was named Brissot. Yet, she mischaracterizes Priestley’s role in the scheme and his relationship with Brissot and Cooper – stating falsely that Brissot was a friend of Priestley and that Cooper was his son-in-law. Park, pp. 12–35. White makes similar criticisms. Edmund J. White, ‘Pantisocracy and Pennsylvania: Plans of Coleridge and Southey and of Cooper and Priestley’, Bulletin for the History of Chemistry, 30 (2005), 70–76. Stuart Andrews documents Cooper and Brissot’s friendship. Both men championed republicanism, the French Revolution, and the campaign against slavery. Brissot’s connection to the latter formed in 1787, when he visited England (Cooper’s Letters on the Slave Trade appeared 1787). Cooper’s 1792 visit to Paris solidified ties to leading Girondists like Brissot. Brissot’s work was translated into English by American poet and reformer Joel Barlow (1754–1812). In 1793, Cooper returned to Paris and gave American speculator Gilbert Imlay (1754–1828) an introduction to Brissot. Finally, Andrews notes that Brissot’s detailed Plan of a Society for Promoting the Emigration from Europa in the United-States, written in England, ‘closely foreshadow the scheme promoted in the mid-1790s by the Priestleys on the banks of the Susquehanna, through the agency of Thomas Cooper’. Stuart Andrews, The Rediscovery of America: Transatlantic Crosscurrents in an Age of Revolution (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), pp. 15–30, 96, 114. Oliver Farrar Emerson, ‘Notes on Gilbert Imlay, Early American Writer’, PMLA, 39 (June 1924), 406–39 (pp. 418–19). Jean Pierre Brissot de Warville, New Travels in the United States of America: Performed in 1788 (London: J. S. Jordan, 1792). Jean-Pierre Brissot, ‘Plan of a Society for Promoting the Emigration from Europa in the United States’, J.-P. Brissot Correspondance et Papiers, precedes d’un aversitement et d’une Notice sur sa Vie, Cl. Perround, (Paris: Alphonse Picard & Fils, 1912), pp. 458–60.
85 The scheme for this ‘New Geneva’ and relocation of Geneva’s Académie was the brainchild of François D’Ivernois, who led the 1783 project in Ireland. D’Invernois’ scheme – sharing several elements with those of Du Pont and the Priestleys – was ambitious. It had exiles buying land, with profits from sales being used to construct college buildings. Investors would obtain land (upon which they could built or speculate), America would gain a leading European college, and the Académie would benefit by relocating to a new and peaceful country. D’Ivernois asked Genevan born American politician Albert Gallatin (1761–1800) to present the plan to powerful Americans and to prevent a dispersal of émigrés, and their capital, upon their arrival. BGE Ms. fr. 3637 24). ‘Plan D’association’, (Philadelphie) 15 décembre 1794; François D’Ivernois (Londres) à T. Jefferson, 5 septembre 1794, J. Adams (Philadelphia) to T. Jefferson, 21 November 1794, F. D’Ivernois (Londres) à T. Jefferson, 11 novembre 1794; T. Jefferson (Monticello) to G. Washington, 23 February 1795. Thomas Jefferson, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. by John Catanzariti and others 40 vols (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950–2013), XXVIII (1995), pp. 123–278; XXV. Edwin G. Burrows, Albert Gallatin and the Political Economy of Republicanism, 1761–1800 (New York: Garland, 1986), pp. 155–58; Jennifer Powell McNutt and Richard Whatmore, ‘The Attempts to Transfer the Genevan Academy to Ireland and to America, 1782–1795’, The Historical Journal, 56 (2013), 345–68 (pp. 351–55).
86 Cooper, Some Information Respecting, pp. iii–iv.
87 Cooper may have gone to Glasgow, as he visited James Watt’s daughter Margaret (1767–96), and her husband James Miller. MS Muirhead IV Box 2, B-C. T. Cooper (Kendal) to J. Watt jnr, 25 March 1794.
88 This was supposedly by having a primary witness of the prosecution found guilty of perjury. Andrews, p. 98; Wansey, Henry Wansey, p. 78, n. 82. However, Cohen rejects this notion, as there is no evidence of Cooper’s participation. Seymour S. Cohen, ‘Two Refugees in the United States, 1794: How We See Them’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 126 (August 1982), 301–15 (p. 312).
89 MS Muirhead IV Box 2, B-C. T. Cooper (Under Cover [Joseph] Johnson’s St. Paul’s Church Yard) to J. Watt jnr. (Birmingham) 19 May 1794; Graham, Revolutionary in Exile, 38.
90 MS Muirhead IV Box 2, B-C. T. Cooper (Manchester) to J. Watt jnr. (Birmingham) 18 July 1794.
91 Perils included brutal suppression of Scottish reformers, threats of French invasion, and fear of arrest after some of Priestley’s friends were arrested by the ministry. Graham, Revolutionary in Exile, pp. 34–41.
92 Ibid., p. 85.
93 J. Priestley to T. Cooper, 6 April 1794. Quoted in Ibid.
94 They embarked from Gravesend, 7 April 1794 aboard the Samson, and arrived in New York, 4 June White, ‘Pantiscrocy and Pennsylvania’, p. 72.
95 Joseph Priestley, Life and correspondence of Joseph Priestley, ed. by John Towill Rutt, 2 vols (London: R. Hunter, 1831–32), vol. II (1832), pp. 238–39.
96 Wansey purchased two shares in their company. Wansey, Henry Wansey, pp. 7–8.
97 Wansey, The Journey of an Excursion, p. 77.
98 Part of Priestley’s letter (14 September 1794) to Theophilus Lindsey was quoted in William Vaughan’s (1752–1850) letter to John Wilkinson (25 October 1794). Graham, Revolutionary in Exile, p. 178.
99 Ibid.
100 MS Muirhead IV Box 7, P. J. Priestley jnr (Northumberland, Pennsylvania) to J. Watt jnr, 20 November 1794.
101 Joseph held the Humphreys responsible for poorly conceiving the scheme, not participating in business, preventing remedies, and refusing Joseph’s proposal to have ‘disinterested persons named by both parties to give their opinion respecting the quality of the land’. Ibid.
102 Priestley, Memoirs of Dr. Joseph Priestley, I (1806), p. 167.
103 MS Muirhead IV Box 7, P. J. Priestley jnr (Northumberland) to J. Watt jnr, 20 November 1794. Chaloner, ‘Dr. Joseph Priestley’, pp. 36–37.
104 Joseph discussed Cooper’s future with James. MS Muirhead IV Box 7, P. J. Priestley jnr (Northumberland) to J. Watt jnr (London), 20 November 1795. Priestley’s concern for Cooper was revealed in his letter to Theophilus Lindsey (14 September 1794) quoted in William Vaughan (1752–1850) to John Wilkinson, 25 October 1794. Graham, Revolutionary in Exile, p. 178.
105 The Priestley and others English discussed problems with the land and Cooper’s embellishments of them. See MS Muirhead IV Box 7, P. J. Priestley jnr (Northumberland) to J. Watt jnr (London), 20 November 1795; J. Priestley to T. Lindsey, 14 September 1794, quoted in W. Vaughan to John Wilkinson, 25 October 1794, Graham, Revolutionary in Exile, p. 178, and Ibid., pp. 85–87.
106 J. Priestley to T. Cooper, 6 April 1794. Quoted in Ibid., p. 85; Wansey, Henry Wansey, pp. 78–79 n. 82.
107 On rampant American land speculation and speculators see Robert D. Arbuckle, Pennsylvania Speculator and Patriot: The Entrepreneurial John Nicholson, 1757–1800 (London: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1975), pp. 1–150; Ryan K. Smith, Robert Morris’s Folly: The Architectural and Financial Failures of an American Founder (London: Yale University Press, 2014), pp. 3–211.
108 Priestley, Memoirs of Dr. Joseph Priestley, I (1806), p. 127.
109 J. Priestley to T. Lindsey, 14 September 1794, quoted in W. Vaughan to John Wilkinson, 25 October 1794, Graham, Revolutionary in Exile, p. 178.
110 MS Muirhead IV Box 7, P. J. Priestley jnr to J. Watt jnr, 20 November 1794.
111 Several Du Ponts were elected so Du Pont adopted ‘de Nemours’. He represented the Third Estate, in spite of nobility, and backed the formation of the Assemblée nationale, the Bastille’s fall, the Tennis Court Oath and Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (signing both), and confiscation of Church lands. William H. A Carr, The Du Ponts of Delaware (London: Muller, 1965), pp. 23–26; Saricks, pp. 99–203.
112 He took part in several committees, served as a secretary, and was briefly president of the Assemblée in 1790. Ibid.; Carr, pp. 23–26; Eleutheère Irénée du Pont, Life of Eleuthére Irénée du Pont from Contemporary Correspondence, ed. and trans. by Bessie Gardner Du Pont, 12 vols (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1923–27), I (1923), pp. 82–144.
113 P.-S. du Pont, ‘(Prospectus.) Printing Office of du Pont Deputé de Nemours à l’Assemblée Nationale’, 8 June 1791. Ibid., p. 144. The Du Pont Press functioned in two parts: a shop on Rue de Richelieu selling publications and the press, securely located on Ile Saint-Louis, across from Île de la Cité and the Notre Dame Cathédral. Ibid., pp. 141–45; Carr, p. 25. Saricks, pp. 204–06.
114 Du Pont signed a lease agreement for space with André Simone Chomassue Châtillon, council for the widow Charlotte-Bénigne le Ragois-de-Bretonvilliers (1741–1824). MS Winterthur 2–5544. DPDN Business Papers (BP). P.-S. du Pont et A. S., Chomassu Châtillon, (Paris) 15 fevrier 1792.
115 The tax collecting monopoly was abolished in 1791. The shift to Du Pont’s Press was logical. Lavoisier was a prominent member of the syndicate and his father-in-law was fermier général. The Lavoisiers lent Du Pont 710,000 francs for a twelve-year mortgage of Bois-des-Fossés. Carr, p. 25; Du Pont, Life of Eleuthére Irénée, I (1923), 185 n. 1; Saricks, pp. 204–06.
116 They trained with a small troop of fifteen family and friends in response to the mob violence in Paris. On August 10 they helped defend the royal family. Only eight of the group survived the attack by blending in as a section of the revolutionaries. Du Pont hid in the dome of the Observatoire, which later became the Institut nationale. The little sustenance he received came from his sons’ former tutor, Phillipe Nicolas Harmand (1759–1839), and Joseph de Lalande (1732–1807), the astronomer. Du Pont was able to escape Paris during the September Massacres. MS Longwood 1–377 P.-S. du Pont à le Conseiller d’Etat Préfet de la Seine comte de l’Empire, 21 aout 1809; Du Pont, Life of Eleuthére Irénée du Pont, I (1923), pp. 9–11.
117 MS Winterthur 2–25544. DPDN BP, P.-S. du Pont à A. S. Châtillon, 15 fevrier 1792.
118 In 1794 Du Pont published the Mémoires 1789 issue, and that of 1790 in 1797. Henry Guerlac, ‘Some Aspects of Science during the French Revolution’, The Scientific Monthly, 80 (1955), 93–101 (pp. 98–99).
119 These included État des finances de France (1791), and Réflexions sur l’instruction publique (1793). Réflexions was compiled by Lavoisier under the name and auspices of the Bureau de consultation des arts et metiers. Guerlac, p. 99.
120 This resulted from Du Pont’s fiscal woes and abolishment of the Académie, before the intended five volumes were printed. In 1793, Lavoisier was arrested (imprisoned in Port-Lire with his father-in-law and other tax collectors) with just over a third printed. Marco Beretta, ‘Lavoisier and his Last Printed Work: Mémoires de physique et chimie (1805)’, Annals of Science, 58 (2001), 327–56 (p. 328); W. A. Smeaton, ‘Madame Lavoisier, P. S. and E. I. du Pont de Nemours and the Publication of Lavoisier’s “Mémoires de Chimie”’, Ambix, 36 (March 1989), 22–29.
121 Beretta, ‘Lavoisier and his Last Printed Work’, pp. 328–31.
122 Lavoisier declared this in January 1793 to Robert Kerr, the English translator of Traité. Ibid., pp. 335–36.
123 They included second editions of Traité élmentaire and Opuscules physiques et chymiques (1774) Ibid., pp. 327–37; Charles Coulston Gillispie, Science and Polity in France: The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Years (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 318–23. Lavoisier’s last work had only a narrow audience. The 1350 texts printed were sent to Mme Lavoisier, who gave at least 250 texts to French, Swiss, and British savants. Beretta, ‘Lavoisier and his Last Printed Work’, pp. 329–30, n. 19.
124 MS Longwood 1–204. P.-S. du Pont, Représentant du Peuples (Des Prisons de la Force) au citoyen La Peveillière-Lépeaux, Présidant du directoire exécutif, 20 Fructidor l’an V (6 September 1797); MS Winterthur 1–67. E. I. du Pont, (à la Force) à S. M. D. du Pont, 20 Fructidor 5 (6 September 1797).
125 Du Pont did denounce Directory measures in his journal l’Historien. After his release Du Pont secretly agreed to resign from the Conseil des anciens and to silence his journal. Thus he avoided being included with those sentenced to deportation to the French colony Guiana. Saricks, pp. 264–69; Thompson, pp. 59–62.
126 Paris, Bibliothètque de France (BNF), MS Nouvelle Acquistions française (NAF) 1303 f. 240 P.-S. du Pont (Membre de l’Institut national) à D.-V. Ramel, (Ministre des Finances), n.d.
127 Saricks, pp. 269–71; Thompson, pp. 66–72.
128 E. I. du Pont to Sophie du Pont, 27 September 1797. Du Pont, Life of Eleuthère Irénée du Pont, IV (1924), 71. Irénée and Sophie Dalmas (1775–1828) married in 1791, after overcoming objections from Du Pont. He feared that they were too young and that Irénée’s progress in the Régie bureaucracy would be precarious, especially if ‘Lavoisier leaves the Poudres for the Treasury’ or died. Prospects for advancement or succeeding Lavoisier vanished in 1791, as Lavoisier moved to the Treasury and Irénée left for the Du Pont Press. MS Longwood 1–55. P.-S. du Pont to E. I. du Pont. 26 August 1791. Antoine McKie, Antoine Lavoisier: Scientist, Economist, Social Reformer (London: Constable, 1952), pp. 248–49; Poirier, pp. 275–82. Robert Fulton held a long interest in improving nautical crafts and transportation. Born in Pennsylvania, Fulton acquired practical skills as a gunsmith, artist, and draughtsman. His success brought him to London and to Paris in 1797. Fulton’s republican sympathies led him to decry war and promote commerce, industry, and liberty. Many of his inventions were intended to reduce militarism and facilitate trade. His famous submersible machine, the Nautilus, briefly attained French support. Joel Barlow (1754–1812) – American poet, speculator, and Jeffersonian – backed Fulton’s submarine schemes. In 1802, he introduced Fulton to Robert R. Livingston (1746–1813), in Paris as American minister plenipotentiary to France. They formed a partnership to build and operate steamboats on the Hudson River. George Dangerfield, Chancellor Robert R. Livingston of New York, 1746–1813 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1960), pp. 404–05; Cynthia Owen Philip, Robert Fulton: A Biography (Lincoln: iUniverse, 2003), pp. 120–22.
129 MS Longwood 1–472 Du Pont, ‘Apperçu Sur l’Establishment Commercial & Rural que va former en Amérique la Maison Dupont de Nemours Père & Fils & Cie’, n.d. [1797–98].
130 Adams refused Victor’s exequatur, to retaliate against to the French Directory’s approach to America, leaving Victor unable to serve as French consul at Philadelphia. Saricks, pp. 270–72, 413 n. 10; Thompson, pp. 72–76.
131 Victor explained that Adams thought Du Pont ‘too intelligent, too philosophical, too moderate, and he pretends to believe you too jacboin in your policies’. V. du Pont to P. S. du Pont, 8 July 1798. Quoted in Ibid., pp. 73–74. Du Pont was a philosophe and a deist. He also maintained minial links to members of the Jacbin political club, but he was not a radical Jacobin. Saricks, pp. 6–7, 160–262.
132 Adams implicated academies, noting: ‘I really begin to think or rather suspect, that learned academies not under the immediate inspection & controll of government, have disorganized the world and are incompatible with social order’. J. Adams to Timothy Pickering, 16 September 1798. Founders Online <https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-2985> [accessed 20 November 2017]
133 Thompson, pp. 73–77.
134 MS Winterthur 2–589 DPDN 2/A/3. P.-S. du Pont (New York) à J-A. Gautier (Londres), 26 pluviôse de l’année 8 (15 février 1800) [Draft].
135 Pierre-Samuel du Pont de Nemours, Philosophie de l’univers, Troisème édition (Paris: Goujon Fils, 1799), p. 326.
136 The house was founded in New York, with a plan to establish a second in Alexandria, Virginia. It had four principles: P.-S., Victor, and E.-I. du Pont as well as Jean-Xavier Bureaux de Pusy (1750–1806), the son-in-law of Du Pont’s second wife Françoise Poivre (1748–1841). The company’s Prospectus was sent out to attract investment. MS Winterthur 2–570. P.-S. du Pont (New York) à Alphonse Porregaux, 27 ventôse l’an VIII (18 March 1800).
137 MS Winterthur 2–1095. DPDN 2/A/6. P.-S. du Pont de Nemours (Paris) a Son Excellence Thomas Jefferson Président du Etats unis, 23 juillet 1808. [Draft].
138 MS Winterthur 2–1095. DPDN 2/A/6. P.-S. du Pont de Nemours (Paris) a Son Excellence Thomas Jefferson Président du Etats unis, 23 juillet 1808. [Draft].
139 In 1791, Priestley asked Lindsey to have Joseph Johnson send him Du Pont’s Considerations upon the Political Situations of France, Great-Britain, and Spain, at the Present Crisis (1790) and other political works. 100. J. Priestley (Birmingham) to Rev. T. Lindsey (Essex Street London) 23 February 1791. The Letters of Joseph Priestley, The Queen Mary Centre for Religion and Literature in English <http://www.qmulreligionandliterature.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/100.1791.02.23.pdf> [accessed 22 April 2017]. The Du Ponts were aware that Priestley and Cooper were skilled chemists. Du Pont called Cooper ‘the greatest chemist’ in America and E. I. referred to Priestley as ‘one of the greatest chemists of Europe’. MS Longwood DPDP 10/C/2. 43. P.-S. du Pont à F. Poivre, 28 mai 1817, p. 3; E. I. du Pont to P. S. du Pont, 16 July 1803. Du Pont, Life of Eleuthère Irénée du Pont, VI (1925), 250–54 (p. 253).
140 MS TJPLC 18142-44. T. Jefferson (Philadelphia) to J. Priestley, 18 January 1800 <https://www.loc.gov/resource/mtj1.022_0034_0036/?sp=1-3> [accessed 18 March 2013]; MS Winterthur 2–2374. DPDN C. T. Jefferson (Philadelphia) to P.-S. du Pont, 12 April 1800.
141 Ibid.; In 1774, Du Pont was appointed to tutor Prince Adam Czartoryski (1770–1861) and serve Poland’s Commission for National Education. The posting was brief (Du Pont was recalled to serve in Turgot’s administration) but helped him purchase the estate, Bois-des-Fossés, near Nemours south of Paris. Saricks, pp. 59–285.
142 MS TJPLC 18142-44. T. Jefferson (Philadelphia) to J. Priestley, 18 January 1800 <https://www.loc.gov/resource/mtj1.022_0034_0036/?sp=1-3> [accessed 18 March 2013]
143 Jefferson declared to Priestley that he required assistance for the cause, ‘to which you have devoted a long life, that of spreading light among men’. Ibid.
144 J. Priestley (Northumberland) to T. Jefferson, 8 May 1800, ‘Hints Concerning Public Education’, in Thomas Jefferson and Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours, The Correspondence of Jefferson and Du Pont De Nemours, ed. by Gilbert Chinard (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1931), pp. 15–18.
145 Ibid., p. 17.
146 Du Pont’s plan was divided into three parts: primary, college, and university instruction. Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours, Sur l’éducation nationale dans les États-Unis d’Amérique (Le Normant, 1812). It was completed in June 1800, and reached Jefferson in July. Jefferson and Du Pont, The Correspondence of Jefferson and Du Pont, pp. 23–24.
147 On Jefferson’s struggles and ultimate success see Gary Wills, Mr. Jefferson’s University (Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, 2002), pp. 21–42.
148 MS Longwood 1–472 Du Pont, ‘Apperçu Sur l’Establishment Commercial & Rural que va former en Amérique la Maison Dupont de Nemours Père & Fils & Cie’, n.d. [1797–98].
149 Thompson, pp. 72–73; Saricks, pp. 269–70.
150 MS Longwood 1–224 P.-S. du Pont (New York) à E.-I. du Pont (Goodstay), 6 October 1801. Du Pont suggested that the colony and college would be mutually beneficial, as American students were ‘More eager for knowledge than Europeans – three hundred boarding pupils will pay six hundred thousand francs and will bring new energy to the farms, the inns, and the whole neighborhood’. P.-S. du Pont, ‘Outline of a Plan for an Agricultural and Commercial Establishment in the United States of America’, [1797], Du Pont, Life of Eleuthère Irénée du Pont, IV (1924), 86–100 (p. 93).
151 J. Priestley (Clapton) to J. Wilkinson, 16 May 1793. Quoted in J. F. Marsh, ‘On Some Correspondence of Dr. Priestley, Preserved in the Warrington Museum and Library’, Transactions of the Historical Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, vol. VII (London: J. H. Parker, 1855), 65–81 (p. 71).
152 Priestley believed many American colleges were founded by Englishman and that there was no better way for ‘men of fortune’ to perpetuate their names. Ibid.
153 Priestley proposed that he would publish his chemistry lectures for his students and include ‘some observations on the new theory’ by Lavoisier and the French philosophers. 146. J. Priestley (Clapton) to William Withering, 15 April 1793. Priestley, A Scientific Autobiography, 265–66 (p. 266). This was Priestley’s Heads of Lectures on a Course of Experimental Philosophy, Particularly Including Chemistry, Delivered at the New College in Hackney (London: J. Johson, 1794).
154 Priestley notified Wilkinson that New College was ‘likely to fail for want of sufficient support’, and few people would aid it, as funds previously contributed had been spent carelessly. J. Priestley (Clapton) to J. Wilkinson, 16 May 1793. Quoted in Marsh, ‘On Some Correspondence of Dr. Priestley’, p. 71. Schofield notes that Priestley sent a plan for New College, which Dissenters hoped would rival Cambridge and Oxford, and provided further aid. Schofield, The Enlightened Joseph Priestley, pp. 216, 246, or 293, 305.
155 J. Priestley (Northumberland) to T. Lindsey (Essex Street [London]), 14 September 1794. Priestley, Life and correspondence II (1832), 273–77. Priestley’s distain is clear: ‘Philadelphia is unpleasant, unhealthy, and intolerably expensive; and there I should have little command of my time. Here I can command the whole; and when I get my books and instruments, I hope to do as much as ever I have done’. J. Priestley (Northumberland) to T. Lindsey, 16 October 1794. Ibid., pp. 276–77.
156 MS TJPLC 18158. J. Priestley (Northumberland) to T. Jefferson, 30 January 1800 <https://www.loc.gov/resource/mtj1.022_0053_0054/?sp=1> [accessed 18 March 2013]
157 Ibid.
158 The landowner, who held the title of much the village’s property, agreed to give them land to construct the college upon. J. Priestley to T. Lindsey, 16 October 1794. Priestley, Life and Correspondence II (1832), 275–78 (p. 277).
159 MS TJPLC 18158. J. Priestley (Northumberland) to T. Jefferson, 30 January 1800 <https://www.loc.gov/resource/mtj1.022_0053_0054/?sp=1> [accessed 18 March 2013]. The college project failed for various reasons, including supporters not honouring pledges, political shifts, and the economic downturn or panic in 1797. Schofield, The Enlightened Joseph Priestley, pp. 330–40.
160 MS Muirhead IV Box 7, P. J. Priestley jnr (Manchester) to J. Watt jnr, 14 April 1793.
161 MS JWP 3219/4/13/7 J. Watt jnr (Manchester) to J. Watt snr (Birmingham), 13 February 1791. It may have involved ‘practical-dying-and-printing’ manufacturing, as Cooper encouraged James to make use of his time in this industry. MS Muirhead IV Box 2, B-C. T. Cooper (London) to J. Watt jnr, March 1791.
162 MS JWP 3219/4/124 J. Watt snr (Heathfield) to J. Watt jnr, 25 January 1791; MS JWP 3219/4/13/6 J. Watt jnr (Manchester) to J. Watt snr (Birmingham), 30 January 1791.
163 MS JWP 3219/4/13/7 J. Watt jnr (Manchester) to J. Watt snr (Birmingham), 13 February 1791; Ibid. 3219/4/13/8 J. Watt jnr (Manchester) to J. Watt snr (Birmingham), 3 March 1791.
164 MS JWP W/13 7. J. Priestley snr (Fairhill) to J. Watt snr, [4] February 1791; MS JWP W/13 11. J. Priestley snr (Birmingahm) to J. Watt snr (Heathfield), 6 January 1791. Priestley preferred that Joseph regain a post with Wilkinson and requested Watt to act as an intermediary. BCL MS JWP W/13 8. J. Priestley snr (Fairhill) to J. Watt snr (Soho), 2 February 1791.
165 MS JWP 3219/4/124 J. Watt snr (Heathfield) to J. Watt jnr, 25 January 1791; MS JWP W/13 7. J. Priestley snr (Fairhill) to J. Watt snr, [4] February 1791; MS JWP 3219/4/13/7 J. Watt jnr (Manchester) to J. Watt snr (Birmingham), 13 February 1791; MS JWP 3219/4/124 J. Watt snr (Heathfield) to W. Matthews, 3 July 1791.
166 MS Muirhead IV Box 7, P. J. Priestley jnr (Manchester) to J. Watt jnr, 14 April 1793.
167 Ibid.; MS Muirhead IV Box 2, B-C. T. Cooper to J. Watt jnr, February 1790; MS JWP 3219/4/13/8 J. Watt jnr (Naples) to J. Watt snr (Birmingham), 20 May 1793; MS Muirhead IV Box 2, B-C. T. Cooper (Kendal) to J. Watt jnr. 25 March 1794.
168 MS JWP 3219/4/129 J. Watt jnr to S. Delessert, 10 September 1794; MS JWP 3219/6/12 162, J. Watt jrn (Soho) to B. Delessert (Paris), 3 June 1814.
169 Wansey, Henry Wansey, pp. 77–78.
170 Ibid., p. 78.
171 Ibid.
172 Schofield, The Enlightened Joseph Priestley, pp. 347–48; 403–06.
173 Joseph established a brewery as well as a commercial nursery fruit and English plants. Ibid., p. 404.
174 MS Muirhead IV Box 7, P. J. Priestley jnr (Northumberland) to J. Watt jnr (Birmingham), 18 December 1796.
175 Schofield, The Enlightened Joseph Priestley, pp. 404–06.
176 Ibid.; Rail, pp. 150–95.
177 Irénée explained this to Jean-Joseph-Auguste Bottée de Toulmon France’s Administrateur des poudres et salpêtres. E.-I. du Pont (New York) to J.-J.-A. Bottée de Toulmon (Administrator General of Powder and Satlpetre, Paris), 26 January 1802. Du Pont, Life of Eleuthère Irénée du Pont, vol. 5, p. 362.
178 These included supplying Saint Domingue with goods as well as naval and banking needs, selling sugar from Guadeloupe and Cayenne, selling French products in America, a loan scheme, war profiteering with Spain, as well as mail and cargo packet boat operations. MS Longwood – 1 215. 10/B/1686 P.-S. du Pont (New York) to J. A. A. Bidermann, 10 Frimaire IX [1 December 1800]. For a full account of Victor’s tour, see Victor Marie Du Pont de Nemours, Journey to France and Spain, 1801, ed. by Charles Wendell David (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1961), pp. 3–83.
179 MS Longwood – 1 215. 10/B/1686 P.-S. du Pont (New York) to J. A. A. Bidermann, 10 Frimaire IX [1 December 1800].
180 MS Winterthur 2–585. DPDN C. 2/A/3 P.-S. du Pont (Good-stay near New York) à T. Jefferson, 14 novembre 1800.
181 Norman B. Wilkinson, ‘Brandywine Borrowings from European Technology’, Technology and Culture, 4, no. 1 (1963), p. 8.
182 Irénée brought some equipment on his return voyage on the cartel ship and had the majority of machines and instrument transported by American navy ship William and Mary. MS Winterthur – 4 132. E. I. du Pont (New York) à Edouard Livingston, 8 mars 1802; MS Longwood 3–823. Jean-Joseph-Auguste Bottée de Toulmin (Le commissaire en chef des poudrerie d’Essonne) à E. I. du Pont, 5 messidor an 9 [24 June 1801]; E. I. du Pont account book. Du Pont, Life of Eleuthére Irénée du Pont, V (1924) p. 212–14.
183 P.-S. du Pont (New York) to T. Jefferson, 23 July 1801. Du Pont, Life of Eleuthère Irénée du Pont, V (1924), 238–41 (p. 239).
184 E. I. du Pont (Georgetown) to P.-S. du Pont, 19 September 1801. Ibid., pp. 278–80; MS Longwood 1–224 P.-S. du Pont (New York) à E.-I. du Pont (Goodstay), 6 October 1801.
185 E. I. du Pont (New York) to Colonel Tousard, 24 December 1801. Du Pont, Life of Eleuthère Irénée du Pont, V (1924), pp. 326–27. E.-I. du Pont (Wilmington) to William Hamon (Wilmington), 26 April 1802. Du Pont, Life of Eleuthère Irénée du Pont, VI (1925) pp. 29–30.
186 E.-I. du Pont (Philadelphia) to P.-S. du Pont, 12 June 1803. Du Pont, Life of Eleuthère Irénée du Pont, VI (1925), 234–37 (p. 237).
187 [Handwriting of E.-I. du Pont] ‘Concerning the Powder Manufacture on the Brandywine’, Ibid., VIII (1925), pp. 241–49 (p. 242).
188 V. du Pont to Necker de Germany, 21 March 1801. Germaine de Staël and Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours, De Staël-Du Pont Letters: Correspondence of Madame De Staël and Pierre Samuel Du Pont De Nemours and of Other Members of the Necker and Du Pont Families, ed. and trans James Fred Marshall (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968), p. 58.
189 The isolation was to ensure ‘the discipline that should control the workmen’. Irénée planned to construct small separated buildings at safe distances from one another to avoid chain explosions, a high fence to enclose the works with the river as an adjoining barrier, and structures built and arranged by labour function to raise productivity and safety. Dangerous buildings were placed furthest from others, made of thick stone walls and weak angled wooden roves, directing blasts to the river and avoid destroying the whole works. Buildings used lighting rods as further protection. Waterpower, through a hydraulic wheel-mill, powered machines and mills. New mechanical processes brought further economy of labour. Irénée implemented such practices to prevent accidents and reduce labour, which were interconnected, and to protect profits. Primary among these was the construction of what he referred to as the ‘Director’s House’. It was to be built on ‘the highest point of land at one corner of the enclosure’, placed so ‘that the whole plant may be seen from its windows and that the entrance of the plant may be at the side of the house’. E.-I. du Pont, MS Longwood 3–2365. 3/B/11 ‘De l’emplcament et des constructions necessaries pour l’éstablishment d’une fabrique de poudres’, [Draft] n.d. [c. 1801]; Bell, Lavoisier in Year One, p. 25.
190 See Stapleton, ‘Élève des Poudres’, pp. 230–41; Darwin H. Stapleton, The Transfer of Industrial Technologies to America (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1987), pp. 87–121; Norman B Wilkinson, ‘Brandywine Borrowings from European Technology’, Technology and Culture, 4, no. 1 (1963), 1–13 (pp. 7–10); Théodore Killheffer, ‘E. I. du Pont de Nemours, Assistant to Lavoisier and Founder of a World Wide Enterprise’, in Lavoisier et la revolution chimique, ed. Michelle Goupil (Paris: Sabix, 1992), pp. 253–56; René Dujarric de la Rivière, E.-I. Du Pont de Nemours élève de Lavoisier (Paris: Librairie des Champs-Élysées, 1954), pp. 157–65.
191 Graham, Revolutionary in Exile, p. 87; MS Muirhead IV Box 7, P. J. Priestley jnr (Northumberland) to J. Watt jnr (Birmingham), 18 December 1796.
192 Whitfield J. Bell, ‘Thomas Cooper as Professor of Chemistry at Dickinson College 1811–1815’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, VIII, no. January (1953), p. 74; James Morton Smith, ‘President John Adams, Thomas Cooper, and Sedition: A Case Study in Suppression’, The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 42, no. 3 (1955), pp. 438–9.
193 MS Muirhead IV Box 2, B-C. T. Cooper (Philadelphia) to J. Watt jnr. (Birmingham) 1 February 1801; Smith, ‘President John Adams, Thomas Cooper, and Sedition’, pp. 439–61.
194 This included fervent support of state’s rights even if it meant succession and, more radically, favouring slavery. As a young man Cooper attacked the institution of slavery. Dumas Malone, The Public Life of Thomas Cooper, 1783–1839 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1961), pp. 148–306.
195 Nicholson was keen to establish a textile manufactory and ultimately worked with Robert Morris to sell Cooper’s group land. Arbuckle, Pennsylvania Speculator and Patriot, pp. 93–113. The French settlement of Asylum, Pennsylvania, bordered or even overlapped with the lands purchased by Cooper and Joseph Priestley junior. The organizers purchased the land from Robert Morris and John Nicholson (1757–1800) in 1793 and established the settlement on the Banks of the Susquehanna as an asylum for émigrés and refugees of French revolutionary violence. Settlers arrive and began construction of roads and buildings, but the colony failed for similar reasons as contemporary settlements. Elsie Murray, ‘French Refugees of 1793 in Pennsylvania’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 87 (1944), 387–93; Catherine A. Hebert, ‘The French Element in Pennsylvania in the 1790s: The Francophone Immigrant’s Impact’, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 108 (October 1984), 451–70.
196 Livingston asked about Boulton & Watt’s terms for a steam engine with a twenty-four inch cylinder, which made four feet strokes, with a furnace for a wooden boiler. The engine had to be as light as possible. Livingston provided a description of circular motion turning a horizontal waterwheel. New York Historical Society MS Robert R. Livingston Papers (RRLP). R. R. Livingston (Clermont State of New York) to J. Watt snr (Birmingham), 4 November 1798. [Good Draft Copy]
197 MS RRLP. J. Watt snr (Glasgow) to John Roberson, 25 October 1800. Livingston had only an indirect response, as Watt's letter was later forwarded to Livingston. Dangerfield, p. 294.
198 Northumberland, Joseph Priestley House (JPH) 200G. R. Livingston (Clermont) to J. Priestley 22 November 1799. Original MS New York Historical Society, New York.
199 160. J. Priestley (Northumberland) to R. R. Livingston, 16 April 1799. Priestley, A Scientific Autobiography, p. 298.
200 Dangerfield, pp. 282–6.
201 162. J. Priestley (Northumberland) to R. R. Livingston, 24 October 1799. Ibid., 299–300 (p. 300). Livingston thanked Priestley for his idea to bleach the paper and sent him a specimen and description of the chemical bleaching method he employed, noting: ‘The agency I have had in other revolutions, & that too by the means of paper, having rendered me anxious to affect this the moment you presented it’. JPH 200G. R. Livingston (Clermont) to J. Priestley 22 November 1799.
202 JPH PH200G 4. T. Cooper (Northumberland) to Robert. R. Livingston. 18 December 1799. Original MS Harverford College Library, Pennsylvania.
203 Dangerfield, pp. 407–22; MS JWP 3219/6/2 F. R. Fulton (Paris) to J. Watt jnr (Birmingham), 10 March 1802; MS JWP 3219/6/2 F. R. Fulton (Paris) to J. Watt jnr (Birmingham), 17 March 1802; MS JWP 3219/6/2 F. R. Fulton (Paris) to J. Watt jnr, 5 February 1802; MS RRLP. R. Fulton (New York) to R. R. Livingston, 24 November 1810.
204 Musson and Robinson, Science and Technology, pp. 347–48.
205 Priestley joked, in his reflections on Livingston’s paper discovery, ‘But it must not be called a revolution in these times. That alone would discredit it, tho ever so useful. It is not, however, the less acceptable to me’. 162. J. Priestley (Northumberland) to R. R. Livingston, 24 October 1799. Priestley, A Scientific Autobiography, 299–300 (p. 300). In this period, Priestley sent copies of his Letters to the Inhabitants of Northumberland and its Neighborhood, on Subjects Interesting to the Author – with its second part being Maxims of Political Arithmetic, applied to the case of the United States of America – (Northumberland, 1999) and Cooper’s Political Essays (Northumberland, 1999) to both Livingston and Jefferson. Priestley informed Livingston: ‘You will not suppose that I was much affected by the scurrility of Porcupine, who has proved, as I remember you predicted, one of the best friends of the Republican cause’. JPH 200G. J. Priestley to R. R. Livingston, [c. 1799] Original MS New York Historical Society, New York; MS TJPLC 18142. T. Jefferson (Philadelphia) to J. Priestley, 18 January 1800 <https://www.loc.gov/resource/mtj1.022_0034_0036/?sp=1> [accessed 18 March 2013]
206 President James Madison likewise sent two nephews to Dickinson College. Bell, ‘Thomas Cooper as Professor of Chemistry’, pp. 70–87.
207 MS Longwood Typescripts, 10/C/2. 43. P.-S. du Pont de Nemours à F. Poivre, 28 mai 1816, 1–4 (p. 3).
208 Du Pont informed Françoise: ‘Alfred is during the summer at Carlisle, during the winter at Philadelphia with Judge Cooper the intimate friend of Mr Priestley. With the judge, he will not study law, but chemistry. M. Cooper is a distinguished chemist. He gives classes in both cities. Alfred will serve as technician; that is the best way to learn’ MS Longwood, Typescripts, 10/C/1. 66. P.-S. du Pont à F. Poivre (1748–1841), 16 octobre 1816, 676–78 (p. 677). Technological innovations pioneered by Livingston-Fulton had, by 1816, improved American navigation. Irénée instructed his wife Sophie: ‘I saw Judge Cooper this evening; he wants Alfred to be here soon as he can. Try to send him Wednesday morning by the Steamboat and I will be here to get him installed’. E. I. du Pont (Philadelphia) to Sophie Madeleine Dalmas du Pont (1775–1828), 7 October 1816. Du Pont, Life of Eleuthère Irénée du Pont, X (1926), 176–77. For full accounts of Alfred du Pont’s education in chemistry see Carroll W. Pursell, ‘Thomas Cooper and Alfred Victor du Pont: A Case Study in Chemical Education in the Early Nineteenth Century’, (Hagley Museum and Library, September 1958), 1–27 (pp. 8–9); Norman B Wilkinson, ‘The Education of Alfred Victor du Pont, Nineteenth Century Industrialist’, Pennsylvania History, 28 (1961), 105–20 (pp. 111–20).
209 MS Longwood Typescripts 10/C/1. 70. P.-S. du Pont de Nemours à F. Poivre, 15 novembre 1816, 714–20 (p. 717). Du Pont quipped to Françoise: ‘Alfred is with the chemist Cooper, distilling his head in the stills and retorts and breaking it against mineralogical stones’. MS Longwood 10/C/2. 93. P.-S. du Pont de Nemours à F. Poivre, 1 juillet 1817, 1–6 (p. 3).
210 MS TJPLC 18142. T. Jefferson (Philadelphia) to J. Priestley, 18 January 1800 <https://www.loc.gov/resource/mtj1.022_0034_0036/?sp=1> [accessed 18 March 2013]
211 P.-S. du Pont to T. Jefferson, 27 August 1799. Quoted in Lawrence S. Kaplan, Thomas Jefferson: America’s Paradoxical Patriot (New York: Rowan & Littlefield, 2008), p. 383; Du Pont expressed similar sentiments to President Adams. MS Winterthur 2–590 P.-S. du Pont à J. Adams, 1800 [Draft].
212 Jefferson asked Du Pont to assist in the discussions for Louisiana and he aspired being named a senator in Napoleonic France. Du Pont edited and published Turgot’s works and served several scientific societies. He hoped to promote Du Pont de Nemours Père et Fils Co., but liquidated it in 1811 for shares in E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. Raymond F. Betts, ‘Du Pont de Nemours in Napoleonic France, 1802–1815’, French Historical Studies, 5 (1967), 188–203 (pp. 190–99); Saricks, pp. 320–40.
213 Joseph Priestley, A General History of the Christian Church, from the Fall of the Western Empire to the Present Time, 3 vols (Northumberland: Andrew Kennedy, 1802), I (1802), p. iv.
214 The imprisonment was for six months and Copper noted that the public paid the £400 fine. MS Muirhead IV Box 2, B-C. T. Cooper (Philadelphia) to J. Watt jnr. (Birmingham) 1 February 1801.
215 MS TJPLC 18142. T. Jefferson (Philadelphia) to J. Priestley, 18 January 1800 <https://www.loc.gov/resource/mtj1.022_0034_0036/?sp=1> [accessed 18 March 2013]
216 MS TJPLC 18158. J. Priestley (Northumberland) to T. Jefferson, 30 January 1800 <https://www.loc.gov/resource/mtj1.022_0053_0054/?sp=1> [accessed 18 March 2013]
217 Schofield, The Enlightened Joseph Priestley, pp. 338–40.
218 Thomas Cooper, The Introductory Lecture of Thomas Cooper, Esq: Professor of Chemistry at Carlisle College, Pennsylvania (Carlisle: A. Loudon, 1812), pp. 60–95.
219 Ibid., p. 96.
220 Ibid., pp. 60–95.
221 MS Longwood 3–1118. T. Cooper (Philadelphia) to E. I. du Pont, 20 June 1819.
222 MS Longwood 3–1149. T. Cooper (Columbia S. Carolina) to E. I. du Pont, 13 September 1823.
223 Cooper had similar offers from several colleges in this period. Malone, pp. 226–80.
224 Isaac Kramnick, ‘Eighteenth-Century Science and Radical Social Theory: The Case of Joseph Priestley’s Scientific Liberalism’, The Journal of British Studies, 25 (January 1986), 1–30 (pp. 8–10).
225 MS Winterthur 2–2559. DPDN C. E. Delessert (Paris) à P.-S. Du Pont (New York) 20 avril 1801. ‘Account of Don Pedro’, in Archives of Useful Knowledge: A Work Devoted to Commerce, Manufacturers, Rural and Domestic Economy, Agriculture, and the Useful Arts, ed. by James Mease, 3 vols. (Philadelphia: David Hogan, 1811), I (1811), pp. 103–06; Margaret Byrd Adams Rasmussen, ‘Waging War with Wool: Thomas Jefferson’s Campaign for American Commercial Independence from England’, Material Culture, 41 (Spring 2009), 17–37 (pp. 22–24); Carroll W. Pursell, ‘E. I. du Pont and the Merino Mania in Delaware 1805–1815’, Agricultural History, 36 (1962), 91–100.
226 MS Winterthur 4–303. E.-I. du Pont (E. I. Mills) à P.-S. du Pont, 1 October 1808. In 1802, as Irénée had government friends help them win contracts to refine saltpetre, he argued that his works ‘will force the improvement of this branch of national industry in which the manufactures of this country have been to present much inferior to those of Europe’. MS Winterthur – 4 132. E. I. du Pont (New York) à Edouard Livingston, 8 mars 1802. Jefferson solicited Henry Dearborn (1751–1829), Secretary of War, for public aid for Irénée’s works. MS Longwood 3–2515. T. Jefferson (Monticello) to H. Dearborn, 29 July 1803.