1. Stephen Girard

One May morning, in the year 1776, the mouth of the Delaware Bay was shrouded in a dense fog, which cleared away toward noon, and revealed several vessels just off the capes. From one of these, a sloop, floated the flag of France and a signal of distress. An American ship ran alongside the stranger, in answer to her signal, and found that the French captain had lost his reckoning in a fog, and was in total ignorance of his whereabouts. His vessel, he said, was bound from New Orleans to a Canadian port, and he was anxious to proceed on his voyage. The American skipper informed him of his locality, and also apprised him of the fact that war had broken out between the colonies and Great Britain, and that the American coast was so well lined with British cruisers that he would never reach port but as a prize. "What shall I do?" cried the Frenchman, in great alarm. "Enter the bay, and make a push for Philadelphia," was the reply. "It is your only chance."

The Frenchman protested that he did not know the way, and had no pilot. The American captain, pitying his distress, found him a pilot, and even loaned him five dollars, which the pilot demanded in advance. The sloop got under weigh again, and passed into the Delaware, beyond the defenses which had been erected for its protection, just in time to avoid capture by a British war vessel which now made its appearance at the mouth of the bay. Philadelphia was reached in due time, and, as the war bade fair to put an end to his voyages, the captain sold the sloop and her cargo, of which he was part owner, and, entering a small store in Water Street, began the business of a grocer and wine-bottler. His capital was small, his business trifling in extent, and he himself labored under the disadvantage of being almost unable to speak the English language. In person he was short and stout, with a dull, repulsive countenance, which his bushy eyebrows and solitary eye (being blind in the other) made almost hideous. He was cold and reserved in manner, and was disliked by his neighbors, the most of whom were afraid of him.

This man was Stephen Girard, who was afterward destined to play so important a part in the history of the city to which the mere chances of war sent him a stranger.

He was born at Bordeaux, in France, on the 21st of May, 1750, and was the eldest of the five children of Captain Pierre Girard, a mariner of that city. His life at home was a hard one. At the age of eight years, he discovered that he was blind in one eye, and the mortification and grief which this discovery caused him appear to have soured his entire life. He afterward declared that his father treated him with considerable neglect, and that, while his younger brothers were sent to college, he was made to content himself with the barest rudiments of an education, with merely a knowledge of reading and writing. When he was quite young, his mother died, and, as his father soon married again, the severity of a step-mother was added to his other troubles. When about thirteen years of age, he left home, with his father's consent, and began, as a cabin-boy, the life of a mariner. For nine years he sailed between Bordeaux and the French West Indies, rising steadily from his position of cabin-boy to that of mate. He improved his leisure time at sea, until he was not only master of the art of navigation, but generally well informed for a man in his station. His father possessed sufficient influence to procure him the command of a vessel, in spite of the law of France which required that no man should be made master of a ship unless he had sailed two cruises in the royal navy and was twenty-five years old. Gradually Girard was enabled to amass a small sum of money, which he invested in cargoes easily disposed of in the ports to which he sailed. Three years after he was licensed to command, he made his first appearance in the port of Philadelphia. He was then twenty-six years old.

From the time of his arrival in Philadelphia he devoted himself to business with an energy and industry which never failed. He despised no labor, and was willing to undertake any honest means of increasing his subsistence. He bought and sold any thing, from groceries to old "junk." His chief profit, however, was in his wine and cider, which he bottled and sold readily. His business prospered, and he was regarded as a thriving man from the start.

In July, 1777, he married Mary Lum, a servant girl of great beauty, and something of a virago as well. The union was an unhappy one, as the husband and wife were utterly unsuited to each other. Seven years after her marriage, Mrs. Girard showed symptoms of insanity, which became so decided that her husband was compelled to place her in the State Asylum for the Insane. He appears to have done every thing in his power to restore her to reason. Being pronounced cured, she returned to her home, but in 1790 He was compelled to place her permanently in the Pennsylvania Hospital, where, nine months after, she gave birth to a female child, which happily died. Mrs. Girard never recovered her reason, but died in 1815, and was buried in the hospital grounds.

Girard fled from Philadelphia, with his wife, in September, 1777, at the approach of the British, and purchased a house at Mount Holly, near Burlington, New Jersey, where he carried on his bottling business. His claret commanded a ready sale among the British in Philadelphia, and his profits were large. In June, 1778, the city was evacuated by Lord Howe, and he was allowed to return to his former home.

Though he traded with the British, Girard considered himself a true patriot, as indeed he was. On the 27th of October, 1778, he took the oath of allegiance required by the State of Pennsylvania, and renewed it the year following. The war almost annihilated the commerce of the country, which was slow in recovering its former prosperity; but, in spite of this discouraging circumstance, Girard worked on steadily, scorning no employment, however humble, that would yield a profit. Already he had formed the plans which led to his immense wealth, and he was now patiently carrying out the most trying and disheartening preliminaries. Whatever he undertook prospered, and though his gains were small, they were carefully husbanded, and at the proper time invested in such a manner as to produce a still greater yield. Stephen Girard knew the value of little things, and he knew how to take advantage of the most trifling circumstance. His career teaches what may be done with these little things, and shows how even a few dollars, properly managed, may be made to produce as many thousands.

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