Jacques Antoine Bidermann

Jacques Antoine Bidermann (April 17, 1790 – June 8, 1865), also known as James Antoine Bidermann, was an American businessman of French and Swiss origins who became the business partner and son-in-law of Éleuthère Irénée du Pont. He married into the Du Pont family and founded the estate that later became the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library.

Early life and family Bidermann was born in Paris in 1790 to Swiss parents Jacques André Bidermann and Gabrielle Aimée Odier. His father was a millionaire financier whose ancestors had established themselves in Winterthur, Switzerland, in the sixteenth century. Culturally French and Protestant, the senior Bidermann became a French citizen in 1790 and flourished in the good graces of Republican and Napoleonic regimes. In 1791, he loaned almost six million francs to the Republic and loaned another four million francs to Napoleon in 1804. To protect his young son from the tumult of the Republican period, he sent Antoine home to the family estate in Winterthur, where he spent his boyhood. Antoine returned to Paris by 1804 and went to work for his father's business. planted extensive gardens and orchards, bred livestock, and developed a model farm and dairy. He was active in the day-to-day management of the farm, often rising before dawn to oversee the morning chores. No later than 1842, he named his estate "Winterthur" after his childhood and ancestral home in Switzerland.

Like his du Pont relatives, Bidermann was a staunch Whig and Union supporter. His wife's favorite riding horse was named Henry Clay, in honor of the Kentucky senator.

Bidermann's health began to fail in the late 1850s, obliging him to rent out parts of the farm. After his wife Evelina died on March 19, 1863, he left Winterthur to reside with his son's family in France. Bidermann died in Paris on June 8, 1865. E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company owed its early success in no small part to his leadership.

The Winterthur estate passed to Bidermann's son, James Irénée Bidermann, who had attended the École Polytechnique, married a Frenchwoman in 1844, and chosen not to return to America. James sold the Winterthur Estate to Henry du Pont, who intended it as a domicile for his eldest son, Henry Algernon. Passed down through the family, the estate became the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library in 1952 and "houses one of the nation's outstanding collections of furniture and the decorative arts."