Girard

STEPHEN, (zhe-rahrd',) an American philanthropist, B. near Bordeaux, France, 1750, rose from a humble sphere of life to become a trader in Philadelphia, 1776, in which city he eventually became a merchant and banker, and ama ed a large fortune. Dying in 1831, he bequeathed $2,000,000 to the erection of a college for orphan boys, conducted on rigidly secular principles. This building, the finest in the Grecian style in the U. States, was commenced in 1833, and completed in 1848. [s. 409]