, he was made to content himself with the barest rudiments of an
education, with merely a knowledge of reading and writing. When he was
quite young, his mother died, and, as his father soon married again,
the severity of a step-mother was added to his other troubles. When
about thirteen years of age, he left home, with his father's consent,
and began, as a cabin-boy, the life of a mariner. For nine years he
sailed between Bordeaux and the French West Indies, rising steadily from
his position of cabin-boy to that of mate. He improved his leisure time
at sea, until he was not only master of the art of navigation, but
generally well informed for a man in his station. His father possessed
sufficient influence to procure him the command of a vessel, in spite of
the law of France which required that no man should be made master of a
ship unless he had sailed two cruises in the royal navy and was
twenty-five years old. Gradually Girard was enabled to amass a small sum
of money, which he invested in cargoes easily disposed of in the ports
to which he sailed. Three years after he was licensed to command, he
made his first appearance in the port of Philadelphia. He was then
twenty-six years old.

From the time of his arrival in Philadelphia he devoted himself to
business with an energy and industry which never failed. He despised no
labor, and was willing to undertake any honest means of increasing his
subsistence. He bought and sold any thing, from groceries to old "junk."
His chief profit, however, was in his wine and cider, which he bottled
and sold readily. His business prospered, and he was regarded as a
thriving man from the start.

In July, 1777, he married Mary Lum, a servant girl of great beauty, and
something of a virago as well. The union was an unhappy one, as the
husband and wife were utterly unsuited to each other. Seven years after
her marriage, Mrs. Girard showed symptoms of insanity, which became so
decided that her husband was compelled to place her in the State Asylum
for the Insane. He appears to have done every thing in his power to
restore her to reason. Being pronounced cured, she returned to her
home, but in 1790 He was compelled to place her permanently in the
Pennsylvania Hospital, where, nine months after, she gave birth to a
female child, which happily died. Mrs. Girard never recovered her
reason, but died in 1815, and was buried in the hospital grounds.

Girard fled from Philadelphia, with his wife,