Albert Gallatin - Early Life

Early Life

Gallatin was born in Geneva, Switzerland, to wealthy Jean Gallatin and his wife, Sophie Albertine Rollaz. Gallatin's family had great influence in Switzerland, and many family members held distinguished positions in the magistracy, military, and in Swiss delegations in foreign armies. Gallatin's father, a prosperous merchant, died in 1765, followed by his mother in April 1770. Now orphaned, Gallatin was taken into the care of Mademoiselle Pictet, a family friend and distant relative of Gallatin's father. In January 1773, Gallatin was sent to boarding school.

As a student at the elite Academy of Geneva, Gallatin read deeply in philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the French Physiocrats; he became dissatisfied with the traditionalism of Geneva. A student of the Enlightenment, he believed in human nature and that when free from social restrictions, it would display noble qualities and greater results, in both the physical and the moral world. The democratic spirit of America attracted him and he decided to emigrate.

In April 1780, he secretly left Geneva with his classmate Henri Serre. Carrying letters of recommendation from eminent Colonials (including Benjamin Franklin) that the Gallatin family procured, the young men left France in May, sailing for the then-Colonies in an American ship, "the Kattie". They reached Cape Ann on July 14 and arrived in Boston the next day, traveling the intervening thirty miles by horseback.