Alfred I. Du Pont - Widowed and Third Marriage

Widowed and Third Marriage

All was not well with du Pont. A bad business transaction had left him nearly bankrupt when, in January 1920, his second wife died. Missing an eye since his earlier accident, he was now also nearly deaf. But his life was about to change with his third marriage.

Du Pont had been corresponding with Jessie Ball, twenty years his junior, since their meeting in 1898 when she was 14. By 1920, Ball was an assistant principal at an elementary school in San Diego, California, and du Pont began courting her,at the same time divesting himself of assets and cutting back on spending. He wed Ball on January 22, 1921, and the couple returned to the East coast to settle into Nemours. The couple had no children of their own, but Ball du Pont accepted young Denise, a child du Pont had fostered with his second wife, as her own. She also helped mend rifts between du Pont and the estranged children of his first marriage.

Ball du Pont proved to be a great assistance to him as well in his work, as did her younger brother. Edward Ball and du Pont hit it off and Edward Ball began working for his brother-in-law in 1923, moving to Delaware where he was publicly named manager of the Clean Food Products Company. Privately, he was du Pont's confidential business partner and became a shrewd financier and caretaker of the du Pont de Nemours estate fortune.