Girard College Historical Collections: Bound Manuscript Rehousing

FAIN: PG-280717-21

Girard College (Philadelphia, PA 19121-4860)
Katherine H. Haas (Project Director: January 2021 to October 2022)

The purchase of custom-fitted archival book boxes to support and protect 725 volumes. The Stephen Girard Papers document the life of Stephen Girard (1750-1831), an American immigrant who, in his fifty-five years in the U.S. (1776-1831), made immense fortunes in shipping, banking, and real estate, reshaping each of those fields and becoming the wealthiest American of his time. At the same time, he held enslaved people in both Philadelphia and Louisiana and traded in goods, such as tobacco and sugar, produced with enslaved labor. At his death, he made the largest private philanthropic gift to that point in American history, surprising his contemporaries by leaving his vast fortune to establish Girard College to educate “poor, white, orphan, boys” between the ages of six and eighteen. Today Girard College is a co-educational, full-scholarship boarding school, grades one through 12, for academically capable students from families of limited financial resources. The Stephen Girard Papers date from 1770 through 1831, and in addition to extensive unbound manuscripts, they include over 1,100 bound manuscript volumes, including letter books, ledgers, receipt books, ships’ logs, and other records. The school history collection begins with Girard’s death in 1831 and continues to the present. This rehousing project would protect the most fragile 40 percent of currently unhoused bound manuscripts.

This grant would support rehousing for the storage and preservation of bound manuscripts in two sections of the Girard College Historical Collections: the Stephen Girard Papers and the school history collection. Overall, these collections include approximately 1900 bound manuscripts. Grant funds will enable the purchase of custom-fitted book boxes to support and protect approximately 725 of the most fragile volumes. These collections are used in scholarly publications, educational activities, exhibits and media programming. They document the life of Stephen Girard (1750-1831), providing insight into a complicated and influential man with an enduring legacy in business, philanthropy, and education and illuminate the world of early national Philadelphia he inhabited. They also chronicle the history of the unprecedented school Girard endowed for disadvantaged youth and provide resources for the broader study of educational, architectural, civil rights, and Philadelphia history.