Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Stephen Girard (French-American Banker, Philanthropist)

Stephen Girard (1750–1831) was a French-born American financier, merchant, and philanthropist. One of the wealthiest Americans of all time, he saved the U.S. government from financial collapse during the War of 1812.

Born near Bordeaux, France, Girard was successively cabin boy, mate, and captain. After the British blockades of U.S. seaports during the Revolutionary War, he settled in Philadelphia and resumed maritime trading. He developed a worldwide trading fleet, instituted efficient business methods, and became America’s wealthiest people.

Girard was an atheist, a miser, and a demanding master. During the yellow fever epidemic in 1793, he nursed many of the sick in the hospitals, and in civic affairs and public wellbeing, his charity was extraordinary.

In 1816, Girard underwrote almost all of the $3 million stock issue to capitalize the Second Bank of the United States, which evolved into the Girard Bank (folded into Mellon Bank in 1983 and subsequently into Citizens Bank.)

Among Girard’s bequests in his will, he left $2 million for founding Girard College in Philadelphia for “poor, white, male, orphans,” with the condition that no priest of any faith was to be allowed on its board or to visit it. Following the American Civil Rights movement, Girard College started admitting African Americans in 1968 and women in 1984.

In 1998, Forbes magazine estimated that Girard’s wealth was 0.67% of the total U.S. economy. He was ranked fourth in Forbes‘s all-time list of wealthiest Americans, behind only John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and John Jacob Astor.

George Wilson wrote Stephen Girard: The Life and Times of America’s First Tycoon (1996.)

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by Stephen Girard

If I thought I was going to die tomorrow, I should nevertheless plant a tree today.
Stephen Girard
Topics: Helping

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