Registration

• This is a free program.

• This program will be held at the German Society of Pennsylvania. Please follow the link below to register:

Description

The name “Stephen Girard” looms large over Philadelphia today, both because of the fortune he left to the city upon his death in 1831, and because of the many Civil Rights controversies surrounding his namesake school, Girard College, in the twentieth century.

Born in France in 1750 before settling in Philadelphia in June 1776, Girard’s life story parallels the rise of the American republic he chose to call home.

This talk explores the notable events, actions, and controversies of Girard’s life and afterlife—his volunteerism during the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1793, his financial investment in the U.S. government during the War of 1812, and his decision to bequeath his fortune to the city of Philadelphia—through the lens of his intellectual and domestic lives. We will meet a man whose legacy was shaped by the grand ideas of his age, as well as the free and enslaved men and women with whom he shared his home. Girard’s wife Mary, his enslaved woman Hannah, and the panoply of other family members, laborers, and romantic partners who spent time in the Girard household all figure in the merchant-banker’s lasting, and complex, legacy. The talk will raise questions about the nature of citizenship, family, philanthropy, and social belonging as pressing in 2026 as they were in 1776.

Offered as part of the German Society’s semiquincentennial celebrations, the talk will also highlight some of Girard’s German connections, most notably a look at his maritime vessels’ German ports of call, the Society’s German translation of Girard’s famous last will and testament, as well as the story of a German American craftsman named George Herzog who painted the ceilings in Founder’s Hall at Girard College decades after Stephen Girard’s death.

Copies of the speaker’s new book Portrait of a Citizen: Stephen Girard, Mariner, Merchant, Banker, and Philanthropist of the Early American Republic, published by De Gruyter Oldenbourg of Berlin, will be available for purchase and inscription.

About the Speaker

 Photo by Tracie Van Auken.  

Alexander Lawrence Ames is Curator & Senior Director of Collections Engagement at the Rosenbach Museum & Library, where he oversees public programs, gallery exhibitions, tours, marketing, communications, and aspects of collection care and stewardship. He was inspired to write his new book about Stephen Girard while working on his first exhibition at the Rosenbach, titled American Voyager: Herman Melville at 200. While doing research for the exhibition, he discovered Girard’s famous ship the Rousseau, which became part of the New Bedford whaling fleet after Girard’s death. Ames previously wrote The Word in the Wilderness: Popular Piety and the Manuscript Arts in Early Pennsylvania (Penn State Press, 2020), which offered a critical reexamination of Pennsylvania German Frakturschrift manuscript illumination. In his free time, Ames loves to play Celtic harp, drink tea, visit historic houses, host his podcast Cloister Talk, and serve on committees at St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church in Roxborough.