[1][2] The museum and estate were the home of Henry Francis du Pont (1880–1969), Winterthur's founder and a prominent antiques collector and horticulturist.

's business partner from France, Jacques Antoine Bidermann (1790–1865), and his wife Evelina Gabrielle du Pont (1796–1863) for the purpose of establishing their estate.

[6] After Bidermann's death, the property passed to his son, James Irénée, who then sold it to his uncle, Henry du Pont.

Henry Algernon and his wife, (Mary) Pauline, settled at Winterthur in 1876 and enlarged the estate's existing home.

Upon his father's 1889 death, Henry Algernon officially inherited the property and converted its main home to a French-style manor house.

[1] H. F. established the main mansion as a public museum for American decorative arts in 1951 and moved to a smaller house on the estate.

[15] Winterthur Museum has been led by eleven executive directors since its founding: Joseph Downs (1951–1954), Charles Franklin Montgomery (1954–1961), Edgar Preston Richardson (1962–1966), Charles van Ravenswaay (1966–1976), James Morton Smith (1976–1984), Thomas Ashley Graves Jr. (1985–1992), Dwight Lanmon (1992–1999), Leslie Greene Bowman (1999–2008), David Roselle (2008–2018), Carol Cadou (2018–2021), and Chris Strand (2021–present).

[23] Holdings include rare books, periodicals, trade catalogs, manuscripts, ephemera, photographs, slides, paper art, the archives of the Winterthur estate and museum, and other resources that support the needs of researchers in American history, decorative arts, architecture, horticulture, and other subjects.

The Joseph Downs Collection of Manuscripts and Printed Ephemera was established in 1955, and the Waldron Phoenix Belknap Jr. Research Library of American Painting was formed circa 1956.

[21] The library's origins go back to Pierre Samuel du Pont, the family patriarch, who collected 8,000 books before his death in 1817.

By the 1940s, H. F. was building a scholarly research collection as part of his plan to transform Winterthur into a museum and teaching institution.

[21][24] Frank Sommer, the first library director, and museum curator Charles F. Montgomery intensified collection development ahead of the 1952 launch of Winterthur's first graduate program, in partnership with the University of Delaware.

[8] He contracted a landscape architect, Marian Cruger Coffin, to assist with the design of 70 acres of the estate's gardens and a model 2400-acre farm.

It also had a butcher shop, a saw mill, a tannery, and a dairy where H. F. continued to breed and raise award-winning Holstein cattle.

[27][28] The colors of the plantings have been carefully selected, featuring hundreds of species and hybrid varieties of rhododendrons and azaleas, as well as peonies, forsythia, daffodils, lilacs, mountain laurel, and dogwood.

[30] In 1991, Winterthur began offering paid internships for aspiring horticulturists and stewards of natural lands, who can reside temporarily on the Estate.

[35] Alumni include artists, curators, and scholars such as Wendell Garrett, Lorraine Waxman Pearce, Jessica Nicoll, Margaret Honda, Debra Hess Norris, and Charles L.