Girard, Ohio: Named for a Philadelphia Millionaire
Near Youngstown, Ohio
Girard, Ohio, four miles northwest of Youngstown, is believed to take its name from Stephen Girard, a French-born Philadelphia banker who died in eighteen thirty-one and left the largest private fortune in American history at the time. Girard never set foot in Ohio, but his name traveled west as a mark of ambition. The first settler here, Hieronimus Eckman, settled land here in eighteen oh-two and cleared it.
The township was formally organized in eighteen thirty-six. Girard sits in the Connecticut Western Reserve, the swath of northeast Ohio settled largely by New Englanders after the Revolution, and it grew into a small industrial city on the edge of the Mahoning Valley steel corridor.
