University of Delaware Press

Founded in 1922, the University of Delaware Press supports the mission of the University of Delaware through the worldwide dissemination of outstanding, peerreviewed scholarship in a wide range of disciplines in the humanities, including literary studies, art history, French studies, and material culture, with a particular focus on the early modern period. The Press also publishes works on the history, culture, and environment of Delaware and the Eastern Shore of interest to the general public, enhancing the university’s community outreach. Our prestigious series invite works that are interdisciplinary, transnational, and/or temporal in nature, supporting the Press’s commitment to publishing innovative and inclusive scholarship.

As of March 2021, all University of Delaware Press titles published in 2019 and thereafter, including a select number of backlist titles, are distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press. These books bear an ISBN prefix of 978-1-64453 and can be ordered in combination with any Rutgers titles. University of Delaware Press titles published before 2019 are distributed by Rowman & Littlefield. In the U.S., these titles can be ordered direct by phone at 1-800-462-6420, or via email at orders@rowman.com. International customers may find out more about ordering information at https://rowman.com/Page/International. See the full list of available University of Delaware Press titles at udpress.udel.edu.

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December 2022

Biography

Victorine du Pont The Force behind the Family

LEONARD C. SPITALE

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.

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. As an educator, he has provided professional training for numerous chaplains and volunteers, and is the author of six publications in that field.

Cultural Studies of Delaware and the Eastern Shore

20th Anniversary Edition

Black Powder, White Lace

The du Pont Irish and Cultural Identity in NineteenthCentury America

MARGARET M. MULROONEY

Twenty years ago, Margaret Mulrooney’s history of the community of Irish immigrant workers at the du Pont powder yards, Black Powder, White Lace, was published to wide acclaim. Now, as much of the materials Mulrooney used in her research are electronically available to the public, and as debates about immigration continue to rage, a new edition of the book is being published to remind readers of the rich materials available on the du Pont workers, and of Mulrooney’s powerful conclusions about immigrant communities in America. Explosives work was dangerous, but the du Ponts provided a host of benefits to their workers. As a result, the Irish remained loyal to their employers, convinced by their everyday experiences that their interests and the du Ponts’ were one and the same. Employing a wide array of sources, Mulrooney turns away from the worksite and toward the domestic sphere, revealing that powder mill families asserted their distinctive ethno-religious heritage at the same time as they embraced what U.S. capitalism had to offer.

December 2022

History • Biography

MARGARET MULROONEY is a professor of history at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA. She is the author of Race, Place, and Memory: Deep Currents in Wilmington, North Carolina (2018) and the editor of Fleeing the Famine: North America and Irish Refugees, 18451851 (2003).

Cultural Studies of Delaware and the Eastern Shore