A new book examining more than a century of fatal explosions at Delaware’s historic Du Pont gunpowder mills will be the subject of a public evening program at Hagley Library in Wilmington on July 23, 2026. The event runs from 6 to 7:30 p.m. in the Copeland Room at 298 Buck Road.
Why It Matters
The Du Pont black powder works along Brandywine Creek supplied gunpowder to the U.S. military from the War of 1812 through World War One — a span of over 120 years. Behind that industrial output was a workforce of largely immigrant laborers who bore the mortal risks of the operation, while the du Pont family lived at a deliberate distance across the creek.
The program offers a rare look at how American industrial power was built on worker sacrifice, at a time when labor safety protections were largely nonexistent and corporate liability was rarely tested in court.
What Happened
Author Richard Templeton will present findings from his book, Across the Creek: Black Powder Explosions on the Brandywine, which traces the history of deadly blasts at the Hagley powder yards from the early 1800s through the early twentieth century. The book documents the deaths of workers — many of them Irish and French immigrants — who operated the mills.
The Brandywine Creek powered the mill operations through a system of raceways and also served as a physical boundary between the working yards and the du Pont family’s residential estate. Workers who died in explosions did so within close geographic proximity to the family whose fortune the operation generated, yet separated by that deliberate natural divide.
Templeton’s research places the Du Pont operation within the longer arc of black powder history. The explosive was first described in Chinese texts around the 9th century AD and made its way to Europe via the Silk Road by the 13th century. By the time Du Pont began operations on the Brandywine, black powder had been central to military conflict for hundreds of years.
By the Numbers
- 120+ years — duration of Du Pont powder yard operations along the Brandywine
- 1867 — the year the Hagley yards reached peak Civil War production, the same year Alfred Nobel invented dynamite
- 9th century AD — earliest Chinese written descriptions of black powder
- 13th century — arrival of black powder in Europe via the Silk Road
- July 23, 2026, 6–7:30 p.m. — date and time of the Hagley Library program
Zoom Out
The history of industrial accidents and employer accountability has long intersected with American legal and labor history. Courts in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries generally shielded employers from liability under doctrines like assumption of risk, which held that workers accepted dangerous conditions when they took a job. The wave of industrial disasters in that era — mining collapses, mill fires, munitions explosions — eventually contributed to early workers’ compensation laws and federal safety regulation.
Immigrant laborers, like the Irish and French workers at the Du Pont yards, were disproportionately concentrated in the most hazardous industrial roles during this period, a pattern historians have documented across sectors from railroads to steel mills. The legal protections now taken for granted in American workplaces were largely absent for the men who died along the Brandywine.
What’s Next
The Hagley Library program on July 23 is open to the public. Templeton is expected to discuss the research methodology behind the book as well as the broader social history of the Du Pont workforce. The Copeland Room is located at Hagley’s campus at 298 Buck Road in Wilmington, Delaware.
Hagley regularly hosts programs connecting Delaware’s industrial heritage to contemporary historical scholarship. The evening event provides an accessible entry point for residents and researchers interested in the human dimensions of American manufacturing history.