Sarah Bolton - Famous Givers and Their Gifts

Mr. Randall asked the energetic young Frenchman to take the position of first officer in his ship L'Aimable Louise. This resulted so satisfactorily that Girard was taken into partnership, and became master of the vessel in her trade with New Orleans and the West Indies.

After nearly two years, in May, 1776, Girard was returning from the West Indies, and in a fog and storm at sea found himself in Delaware Bay, and learned that a British fleet was outside. The pilot, who had come in answer to the small cannon fired from Girard's ship, advised against his going to New York, as he would surely be captured, the Revolutionary War having begun. As he had no American money with him, a Philadelphia gentleman who came with the pilot loaned him five dollars. This five-dollar loan proved a blessing to the Quaker City, when in after years she received millions from the merchant who came by accident into her borders.

Captain Girard sold his interest in L'Aimable Louise, and opened a small store on Water Street, putting into it his cargo from the West Indies. He hoped to go to sea again as soon as the war should be over, and conferred with Mr. Lum, a plain shipbuilder near him on Water Street, about building a ship for him. Mr. Lum had an unusually beautiful daughter, Mary, a girl of sixteen, with black hair and eyes, and very fair complexion. Though eleven years older than Mary, Stephen Girard fell in love with her, and was married to her, June 6, 1777, before his family could object, as they soon did strenuously, when they learned that she was poor and below him in social rank.

About three years after the marriage, Jean visited his brother Stephen in America, and seems to have appreciated the beautiful and modest girl to whom the family were so opposed. Henry Atlee Ingram, LL.B., in his life of Girard, quotes several letters from Jean after he had returned to France, or when at Cape François, San Domingo: "Be so kind as to assure my dear sister-in-law of my true affection… Say a thousand kind things to her for me, and assure her of my unalterable friendship… Thousands and thousands of friendly wishes to your dear wife. Say to her that if anything from here would give her pleasure, to ask me for it. I will do everything in the world to prove to her my attachment… I send by Derussy the jar which your lovely wife filled for me with gherkins, full of an excellent guava jelly for you people, besides two orange-trees. He has promised me to take care of them. I hope he will, and embrace, as well as you, my ever dear Mary."

Three or four months after his marriage, Lord Howe having threatened the city, Mr. Girard took his young wife to Mount Holly, N.J., to a little farm of five or six acres which he had purchased the previous year for five hundred dollars. Here they lived in a one-story-and-a-half frame house for over a year, when they returned to Philadelphia and he resumed his business. He had decided already to become a citizen of the Republic, and took the oath of allegiance, Oct. 27, 1778.

Mr. Lum at once began to build the sloop which Mr. Girard was planning when he first met Mary, and she was named the Water-Witch. Until she was shipwrecked, five or six years later, Mr. Girard believed she could never cause him loss. Already he was worth over one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, made by his own energy, prudence, and ability; but he lived with great simplicity, and was accumulating wealth rapidly. In 1784 he built his second vessel, named, in compliment to Jean, the Two Brothers.

The next year, 1785, when he was thirty-five years old, the great sorrow of his life came upon him. The beautiful wife, only a little beyond her teens, became melancholy, and then hopelessly insane. Mr. Ingram believes the eight years of Mary Girard's married life were happy years, though the contrary has been stated. Without doubt Mr. Girard was very fond of her, though his unbending will and temper, and the ignoring of her relatives, were not calculated to make any woman continuously happy. Evidently Jean, who had lived in the family, thought no blame attached to his brother; for he wrote from Cape François: "It is impossible to express to you what I felt at such news. I do truly pity the frightful state I imagine you to be in, above all, knowing the regard and love you bear your wife… Conquer your grief, and show yourself by that worthy of being a man; for, dear friend, when one has nothing with which to reproach one's self, no blow, whatsoever it may be, should crush him."

After a period of rest, Mrs. Girard seemed to recover. Stephen and Jean formed a partnership, and the former sailed to the Mediterranean on business for the firm. After three years the partnership was dissolved by mutual consent, Stephen preferring to transact business alone. As soon as these matters were settled, he and his wife were to take a journey to France, which country she had long been anxious to visit. Probably the family would then see for themselves that the unassuming girl made an amiable, sensible wife for their eldest son.

In the midst of preparations, the despondency again returned; and by the advice of physicians, Mrs. Girard was taken to the Pennsylvania Hospital, at Eighth and Spruce Streets, Aug. 31, 1790, where she remained till her death in 1815, insane for over twenty-five years. She retained much of the beauty of her girlhood, lived on the first floor of the hospital in large rooms, had the freedom of the grounds, and was "always sitting in the sunlight." Her mind became almost a blank; and when the housekeeper came bringing the little daughters of Jean, Mrs. Girard scarcely recognized her.

To add still more to Mr. Girard's sorrow, after his wife had been at the hospital several months, on March 3, 1791, a daughter was born to her, who was named for the mother, Mary Girard. The infant was taken into the country to be cared for, and lived but a few months. It was buried in the graveyard of the parish church.

Bereft of his only child, his home desolate, Mr. Girard plunged more than ever into the whirl of business. He built six large ships, naming some of them after his favorite authors, – Voltaire, Helvetius, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Good Friends, and North America, – to trade with China and India, and other Eastern countries. He would send grain and cotton to Bordeaux, where, after unloading, his ships would reload with fruit and wine for St. Petersburg. There they would dispose of their cargo, and take on hemp and iron for Amsterdam. From there they would go to Calcutta and Canton, and return, laden with tea and silks, to Philadelphia.

Little was known about the quiet, taciturn Frenchman; but every one supposed he was becoming very rich, which was the truth. He was not always successful. He says in one of his letters, "We are all the subjects of what you call 'reverses of fortune.' The great secret is to make good use of fortune, and when reverses come, receive them with sang froid , and by redoubled activity and economy endeavor to repair them." His ship Montesquieu, from Canton, China, arrived within the capes of Delaware, March 26, 1813, not having heard of the war between America and England, and was captured with her valuable cargo, the fruits of the two years' voyage. The ship was valued at $20,000, and the cargo over $164,000. He immediately tried to ransom her, and did so with $180,000 in coin. When her cargo was sold, the sales amounted to nearly $500,000, so that Girard's quickness and good sense, in spite of the ransom, brought him large gains. The teas were sold for over two dollars a pound, on account of their scarcity from the war.

Mr. Girard rose early and worked late. He spent little on clothes or for daily needs. He evidently did not care simply to make money; for he wrote his friend Duplessis at New Orleans: "I do not value fortune. The love of labor is my highest ambition… I observe with pleasure that you have a numerous family, that you are happy in the possession of an honest fortune. This is all that a wise man has a right to wish for. As to myself, I live like a galley-slave, constantly occupied, and often passing the night without sleeping. I am wrapped up in a labyrinth of affairs, and worn out with care."