Dear Listers, Thank you very much for the quick response about the A.V. Dupont Company. My weak recollection about the Maryland outfit, which I studied in MBA school, was that it was a schlock outfit with a good public relations branch. When it took over Alfred Nobel's dynamite concession for America, it became big time. Railroad building used far more explosives than wars did, I was told. Dupont supplied the railroads. Although I spent my first 27 years in Louisville, I had no idea what A. V. Dupont was. Now I know. Also, I used to correspond with George Yater, who wrote interesting materials about the Lewis and Clark Expedition (my mother was a Pryor and the Nathaniel Hale Pryor who was on that trek interested me). George did not tell me he wrote a history of Louisville. Finally, as for the booze connection, I would guess that Dupont printed labels and advertising for the industry. Of course, that is speculation. During WWII in Louisville, my dad, who was too old for military service, took a federal job. He was a storekeeper-gauger who tested whiskey in bonded warehouses and kept tax records. I have seen the insides of many distilleries and breweries. Then he was an agent for the Alcohol Tax Unit of the Treasury Department--a federal revenuer for KY and TN. He didn't drink much. I drink even less. Tom, formerly of Louisville.