AMERICANS BY ADOPTION
I
STEPHEN GIRARD
Born in Bordeaux, France, 1750
Died in Philadelphia, 1831
The old French city of Bordeaux has for centuries been one of the greatest maritime cities of Europe. Situated on the low shore of the River Garonne, its stone quays have for generations been close-packed with the ships of a world-wide commerce. Under the Roman Empire it was a flourishing city; in the fourth century, surrounded by massive walls and lofty towers, it became the capital of Aquitania Secunda; and later, for three hundred years, it was ruled by English kings. Here reigned Edward, the Black Prince, and here was born his son Richard. Between the Bordeaux merchants and the English an extensive commerce developed, and as years passed by, this commerce branched out into a world-activity that to-day maintains relations with all civilized lands, but chiefly, as has been the case for a century and a half, with England, South America, the West Indies, and the United States.
In the year 1750 the stone wharves along the river bristled with the masts and spars of the fleets of the Bordeaux merchants. Small ships they were compared with the great steel cargo-carriers that to-day line the stream; but they were staunchly built and strongly manned, and their rich cargoes, safely transported from the distant Indies, filled the city with wealth and the romance of blue salt water and foreign lands.
In that same year, in a house in rue Ramonet au Chartrons, then a suburb of the city, was born Stephen Girard, son of Pierre Girard, Captain of the Port of Bordeaux. Pierre the father was a man of some importance and a prosperous merchant in the city. In 1744, during the War of the Austrian Succession, he had served with honor in the French navy, and at the blockade of Brest, he had received the Military Order of Saint Louis for his heroic action in putting out the flames on his ship, which had been fired by a fire-ship sent into the French squadron by the British. In later years he became Burgess of Bordeaux, and during this period he began to trade with the French ports in the island of San Domingo in the West Indies. Of such stock was the boy Stephen; born with the romance of the sea as his inheritance and with the heroic memory of his father to inspire him, but born with a handicap which, however, he never permitted to retard his progress; for from birth he was sightless in his right eye.
It was natural that the boy should turn to the sea. When he was twelve years old, the death of his mother left him a half-orphan. His education had been of the most general nature. There was little to draw him into the occupations of the land. To the lonesome lad the sea offered at least the promise of adventure, and perhaps the rewards of wealth and distinction. In the year 1764 Stephen was fourteen. His father’s trading activities with the West Indies afforded the opening he desired; and with his few belongings packed in a sea-chest, he shipped as cabin-boy on a small merchantman to Port-au-Prince. Five more voyages followed, and in 1773 he was licensed to act as “captain, master, or pilot of any merchant ship he could obtain.”
A year later as “officer of the ship” La Julie, he sailed from Bordeaux for Port-au-Prince. It was the final severance of his tie with France. The cargo consisted chiefly of general merchandise, in which Stephen had purchased a small share, bought from Bordeaux merchants with notes, or promises to pay at some later date. But business was slow in the islands, and the goods sold at a loss of over twenty-five per cent. In those days a man might be imprisoned for debt, and Girard realized that such a fate might await him should he return to Bordeaux. Accordingly, he obtained his discharge from the ship, and with a young acquaintance determined to form a partnership for the purpose of trading between the island ports. So with many who have sought freedom in the new world, cruel laws and the dread of an unjust imprisonment forced Girard to forsake his native land. But the just debt which he owed was not forgotten, and in later years the Bordeaux merchants, whose anger he had feared, received from him payment in full of the merchandise they had advanced him.
In July, 1774, Girard sailed for New York with a small cargo of coffee and sugar. It was a stirring time in the history of the American Colonies. For a dozen years the free spirit of the Americans had chafed under the oppression of British rule. Open fighting had occurred in Boston in 1770, when, in a fight between the populace and the British soldiers, three men were killed and eight were wounded. Two years later the British revenue schooner Gaspee was seized and burned by the people of Rhode Island, and in 1773 the citizens of Boston, disguised as Indians, emptied into the water of Boston Harbor 342 chests of tea from an English merchantman, as a protest against taxation without representation in Parliament. In retaliation, acts obnoxious to the people of Massachusetts were passed by the British Government; and in answer to these, on September 5, 1774, the Continental Congress was assembled at Philadelphia, and a declaration of rights was drawn up and published, defining the spirit of the American Colonies and indicating the consequences which must follow further interference with the liberty of the American people to levy their own taxes and make their own laws in their own Colonial assemblies.
Backing words with deeds, the Colony of Massachusetts set up its own government in defiance of General Gage, the British representative, and placed at its head John Hancock, an influential merchant of Boston. Twelve thousand volunteer militiamen were organized,—of whom about one third were known as “minute men,” or soldiers ready to march or fight at a minute’s notice,—and stores and ammunition were collected. Into such a scene sailed the young French boy with his cargo of sugar and coffee; and it is not surprising that his liberty-loving spirit sympathized with the indomitable determination of the colonists to rid themselves of the yoke of an old-world nation, and led him to seek employment in New York City, with some merchants there who traded with San Domingo.