25 Facts About Stephen Girard

Stephen Girard lost the sight in his right eye at the age of eight and had little education.

Stephen Girard was licensed as a captain in 1773, visited New York in 1774, and with the assistance of a New York merchant began to trade to and from New Orleans and Port au Prince.

In 1783, Stephen's brother John Girard left him with a slave, a woman in her twenties named Hannah, during a visit from Saint-Domingue.

Stephen Girard was left with $10,000 of goods stowed on his ships, the owners of which were likely massacred.

Stephen Girard participated in the Old China Trade, financing voyages to Canton.

In 1776, Stephen Girard met Mary Lum, a Philadelphia native nine years his junior.

Stephen Girard supervised the conversion of a mansion outside the city limits into a hospital and recruited volunteers to nurse victims, and personally cared for patients.

Stephen Girard hired George Simpson, the cashier of the First Bank, as cashier of the new bank, and with seven other employees opened for business on May 18,1812.

Stephen Girard allowed the Trustees of the First Bank of the United States to use some offices and space in the vaults to continue the process of winding down the affairs of the closed bank at a very nominal rent.

Philadelphia banks balked at accepting the notes that Stephen Girard issued on his personal credit and lobbied the state to force him to incorporate, without success.

Stephen Girard's Bank was the principal source of government credit during the War of 1812, worth an outstanding $1 million.

Towards the end of the war, when the financial credit of the US government was at its lowest, Stephen Girard placed nearly all of his personal resources at the disposal of the government and underwrote up to 95 percent of the war loan issue, which enabled the United States to carry on the war.

On December 22,1830, Stephen Girard was seriously injured while crossing the street near Second and Market Streets in Philadelphia.

Stephen Girard was knocked down by a horse and wagon, and one of its wheels ran over the left side of his face, lacerating his cheek and ear as well as damaging his good eye.

Stephen Girard threw himself back into his banking business, although he remained out of sight for two months.

Stephen Girard was buried in the vault he built for his nephew in the Holy Trinity Catholic cemetery, then at Sixth and Spruce Streets.

At the time of his death, Stephen Girard was the wealthiest man in America.

Michael Klepper and Robert Gunther, in their book The Wealthy 100, posit that, with adjustment for inflation, Girard was the fifth-wealthiest American of all time as of 1996, behind John D Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and John Jacob Astor.

Stephen Girard was worth around $7.5 million at the time of his death, equal to $255.9 million today.

Stephen Girard was an atheist throughout his life, and he included his views on religion in his last testament.

Stephen Girard's will was contested by his family in France but was upheld by the US Supreme Court in a landmark case, Vidal et al.

Stephen Girard bequeathed nearly his entire fortune to charitable and municipal institutions of Philadelphia and New Orleans, including an estimated $6 million for establishing a boarding school for "poor, male, white orphans" in Philadelphia, primarily those who were the children of coal miners, which opened as Girard College in 1848.

Stephen Girard made a bequest of $10,000 to the public schools of Philadelphia, with the income from its investment to be used for the purchase of books for the school libraries, and a bequest for the establishment of funds to procure medals for deserving pupils.

When Stephen Girard's former counting house on 22 North Water Street near the corner of Front and Market Streets was demolished in 1907, a set of underground cells were uncovered.

Stephen Girard did not believe in idleness, and in a time when people were loath to take handouts, he instead would pay for useless work.