Girard was born at Bordeaux, France, on May 21, 1750, and was the eldest of five children of Captain Pierre Girard, a mariner. When eight years old he became blind in one eye, a loss and deformity which subjected his sensibilities to severe trials and which had the effect of rendering him morose and sour. It was his lament in later life that while his brothers had been sent to college, he was the ugly duckling of the family and came in for his father's neglect and a shrewish step-mother's waspishness. At about fourteen years of age he relieved himself of these home troubles and ran away to sea. During the nine years that he sailed between Bordeaux and the West Indies, he rose from cabin-boy to mate. Evading the French law 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, Girard got the command of a trading vessel when about twenty-two years old. While in this service he clandestinely carried cargoes of his own which he sold at considerable profit. In May, 1776, while en route from New Orleans to a Canadian port, he became enshrouded in a fog off the Delaware Capes, signaled for aid, and when the fog had cleared away sufficiently for an American ship, near by, to come to his assistance, learned that war was on. He thereupon scurried for Philadelphia, where he sold vessel and cargo, of which latter only a part belonged to him, and with the proceeds opened up a cider and wine bottling and grocery business in a small store on Water street.
Girard made money fast; and in July, 1777, married Mary Lum, a woman of his own class. She is usually described as a servant girl of great beauty and as one whose temper was of quite tempestuous violence. This unfortunate woman subsequently lost her reason; undoubtedly her husband's meannesses and his forbidding qualities contributed to the process. One of his most favorable biographers thus describes him: "In person he was short and stout, with a dull repulsive countenance, which his bushy eyebrows and solitary eye almost made hideous. He was cold and reserved in manner, and was disliked by his neighbors, the most of whom were afraid of him."1