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Alexis I. du Pont Bayard

American politician in Delaware (1918-1985)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 4, 2026
Entity authorityQ4721465 ↗
Source-derived summary

Alexis Irénée du Pont Bayard (February 11, 1918 – September 3, 1985) was an American lawyer and politician from Rockland, near Greenville, in New Castle County, Delaware. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 13th Lieutenant Governor of Delaware from 1949 to 1953 and ran unsuccessfully for the United States Senate in 1952.

Early life

Bayard was born in Wilmington, Delaware, son of U.S. Senator Thomas F. Bayard Jr. and Elizabeth Bradford du Pont Bayard. He was named after his maternal great-grandfather, Alexis Irénée du Pont. Bayard was the scion of two prominent Delaware families. On his father's side, Alexis descended from the politically powerful Bayard family. The Bayards had long been bulwarks of Delaware's Democratic Party, with each of the previous five generations of the Bayard family having represented Delaware in the United States Senate. Bayard's mother, Elizabeth Bradford du Pont, was the daughter of Alexis Irénée du Pont Jr., granddaughter of Alexis Irénée du Pont, and great-granddaughter of Eleuthère Irénée du Pont. He was the founder of E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, the gunpowder and chemicals company that grew to dominate northern Delaware in the early twentieth century.

Editorial summary

“Alexis I. du Pont Bayard” enters the record as american politician in Delaware (1918-1985). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Alexis, Pont and Bayard can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1918, 1985, 1949, 1953—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Alexis, Pont and Bayard.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Alexis I. du Pont Bayard” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Alexis, Pont and Bayard provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4721465. The first chronological checks are 1918, 1985, 1949 and 1953.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Alexis I. du Pont Bayard”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Alexis I. du Pont Bayard primary sources, Alexis I. du Pont Bayard archive and Alexis research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Alexis I. du Pont Bayard”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Alexis I. du Pont Bayard” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.