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Girard, Stephen

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Encyclopedias
1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
• Stephen Girard
McClintock and Strong's Bible Encyclopedia
• Girard, Stephen
The Nuttall Encyclopedia
• Girard, Stephen

A philanthropist, born at Bordeaux; in early life followed the career of a seaman and rose to be captain of an American coast-trader; in 1769 set up as a trader in Philadelphia, and in course of time establishing a bank, accumulated an immense fortune; during his lifetime he exhibited a strange mixture of niggardliness, scepticism, public charitableness, and a philanthropy which moved him during a yellow-fever epidemic to labour as a nurse in the hospital; at his death he bequeathed $2,000,000 to found an orphanage for boys, attaching to the bequest the remarkable condition, that no clergyman should ever be on the board or ever be permitted to enter the building (1750-1831).