Wow- thanks- Remarkable man-
Here is more on Girard. Maybe a combination of mgt and luck. I believe the parents of the girl he married had just died a few months before the marriage and was his initial source of capital.
When I work with farmers, at the end of the year I always asked them if it was luck or management. It was always management in good years, bad luck in bad years. The reality it is usually the interaction of both...………….
https://www.phillymag.com/news/2016/03/03/stephen-girard-american-rags-riches-story/
He sailed to New York in 1774, became acquainted with that city’s merchants and seamen, and began to import coffee and sugar from the West Indies to the Colonies while selling Colonial goods abroad. When the British blockade of 1776 prevented him from a return to New York, he sailed instead to Philadelphia, where he took up residency just as the Revolution began. That same year, he met and married an 18-year-old beauty, Mary Lum, and moved with her to Mount Holly, New Jersey, where they opened a store and provisioned the Colonial army.