Famous Givers and Their Gifts. Bolton Sarah Knowles
people at the Museum on Saturday evenings, by various lecturers. The Board, under the direction of Dr. Henry M. Leipziger, is doing good work in its free illustrated lectures for the people in many portions of the city. These are given in the evenings, and often at the grammar-school buildings, a good use to which to put them. Such subjects are chosen as The Navy in the Civil War, The Progress of the Telegraph, Life in the Arctic Regions, Emergencies and How to Meet Them (by some physician), Iron and Steel Ship-building, The Care of the Eyes and Teeth, Burns and Scotland, Andrew Jackson, etc. Rich and poor are alike welcome to the lectures, and all classes are present.
A city or State that does such work for the people will reap a hundred-fold in coming generations.
STEPHEN GIRARD
AND HIS COLLEGE FOR ORPHANS
Near the city of Bordeaux, France, on May 20, 1750, the eldest son of Pierre Girard and his wife, Anne Marie Lafargue, was born. The family were well-to-do; and Pierre was knighted by Louis XV. for bravery on board the squadron at Brest, in 1744, when France and England were at war. The king gave Pierre Girard his own sword, which Pierre at his death ordered to be placed in his coffin, and it was buried with him. Although the Girard family were devoted to the sea, Pierre wished to have his boys become professional men; and this might have been the case with the eldest son, Stephen, had not an accident changed his life.
When the boy was eight years old, his right eye was destroyed. Some wet oyster-shells were thrown upon a bonfire, and the heat breaking the shells, a ragged piece flew into the eye. To make the calamity worse, his playmates ridiculed his appearance with one eye closed; and he became sensitive, and disinclined to play with any one save his brother Jean.
He was a grave and dignified lad, inclined to be domineering, and of a quick temper. His mother tried to teach him self-control, and had she lived, would doubtless have softened his nature; but a second mother coming into the home, who had several children of her own, the effect upon Stephen was disastrous. She seems not to have understood his nature; and when he rebelled, the father sided with the new love, and bade his son submit, or find a home as best he could.
"I will leave your house," replied the passionate boy, hurt in feelings as well as angered. "Give me a venture on any ship that sails from Bordeaux, and I will go at once, where you shall never see me again."
A business acquaintance, Captain Jean Courteau, was about to sail to San Domingo in the West Indies. Pierre Girard gave his son sixteen thousand livres, about three thousand dollars; and the lad of fourteen, small for his age, went out into the world as a cabin-boy, to try his fortune.
If his mother had been alive he would have been homesick, but as matters were at present the Girard house could not be a home to him. His first voyage lasted ten months; the three thousand dollars had gained him some money, and the trip had made him in love with the sea. He returned for a brief time to his brothers and sisters, and then made five other voyages, having attained the rank of lieutenant of the vessel.
When he was twenty-three, he was given authority to act as "captain of a merchant vessel," and sailed away from Bordeaux forever. After stopping at St. Marc's in the island of San Domingo, young Girard sailed for New York, which he reached in July, 1774. With shrewd business ability he disposed of the articles brought in his ship, and in so doing attracted the interest of a prosperous merchant, Mr. Thomas Randall, who was engaged in trade with New Orleans and the West Indies.
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,