Albert Gallatin was born in Geneva, Switzerland, January 20, 1761. Both of his parents were of distinguished families and died while he was an infant. He graduated from the University of Geneva in 1779.

Feeling a great sympathy for the American colonists in their struggle for liberty, he came to Massachusetts in 1780, entered the military service, and for a few months commanded the post at Passamaquoddy.

At the close of the war he taught French at Harvard University, where he remained until 1784, when he received his patrimonial estate. He invested it in land in West Virginia and Western Pennsylvania, and, in 1786, he settled on land on the banks of the Monongahela River, in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. Here he lived and became naturalized.

The town was named New Geneva for his native place in Switzerland. Here he built a log house, which subsequently gave place to a stone structure yet standing. He was a partner in establishing the first glass house in that section of the State. He became one of the foremost citizens of America.

He served in the General Assembly of Pennsylvania for several terms and in 1793 was chosen a United States Senator for Pennsylvania but was declared ineligible on the ground that he had not been a citizen of the United States the required nine years.

During the Whisky Insurrection in Western Pennsylvania, 1794, Albert Gallatin played a conspicuous role.

In the meeting of the malcontents, August 14, 1794, at Parkinson's Ferry, where 260 delegates, elected by the several counties, organized and adopted some intemperate resolutions, Colonel Edward Cook was appointed chairman, and Albert Gallatin, secretary. The organic force of the insurrection was condensed into a committee of sixty and that committee was again represented by a Standing Committee of twelve.

Gallatin was energetic in working with his friends to gain time and restore quietness. He presented with great force the folly of resistance and the ruinous consequences to the country of the continuance of the insurrection. He urged that the Government was bound to vindicate the laws and that it would surely send an overwhelming force against them. He placed the subject in a new light and showed the insurrection to be a much more serious affair than it had before appeared.

After the Pennsylvania commissioners had reached Pittsburgh and met with those of the National Government and the committee appointed at the meeting at Parkinson's Ferry, a conference of the committee of sixty was held at Redstone Old Fort, now Brownsville.

This meeting was opened by a long, sensible and eloquent speech by Albert Gallatin in favor of law and order. Backed by Judge Hugh H. Brackenridge, Gallatin won the day, and the insurrection was happily ended before the army was called into action.

Gallatin was censured for the part he had taken, but no man stood higher in the opinion, not only of President Washington, but of the Pennsylvania authorities. In the General Assembly December, 1794, in an able speech Gallatin admitted his "political sin" in the course he had taken in the insurrectionary movement.

He was elected to Congress in 1795, and in a debate on Jay's Treaty in 1796 he charged Washington and Jay with having pusillanimously surrendered the honor of their country. This, from the lips of a young foreigner, exasperated the Federalists. He was a leader of the Democrats and directed his attention particularly to financial matters.

Gallatin remained in Congress until 1801, when President Thomas Jefferson appointed him Secretary of the Treasury, which office he held until 1813, and obtained the credit of being one of the best financiers of the age.

The opponents of Jefferson's Administration complained vehemently in 1808 that the country was threatened with direct taxation at a time when the sources of its wealth, by the orders and decrees of Great Britain and France, were drying up. Gallatin replied to these complaints, as Secretary of the Treasury, by reproducing a flattering but delusive suggestion contained in his annual report the preceding year.

He suggested that as the United States was not likely to be involved in frequent wars, a revenue derived solely from duties on imports, even though liable to diminution during war, would yet amply suffice to pay off, during long intervals of peace, the expenses of such wars as might be undertaken.

Should the United States become involved in war with both France and Great Britain, no internal taxes would be necessary to carry it on, nor any other financial expedient, beyond borrowing money and doubling the duties on import. The scheme, afterward tried, bore bitter fruit.

His influence was felt in other departments of Government and in the politics of the country. Opposed to going to war against Great Britain in 1812, he exerted all his influence to avert it.

In March, 1813, he was appointed one of the envoys to Russia to negotiate for the mediation of the Czar between the Untied States and Great Britain. He sailed for St. Petersburg, but the Senate in special sessions, refused to ratify his appointment because he was Secretary of the Treasury. The attempt at mediation was unsuccessful.

When, in January, 1814, Great Britain proposed a direct negotiation for peace, Gallatin, who was still abroad, was appointed one of the United States Commissioners. He resigned his secretaryship. He was one of the signers of the Treaty of Ghent.

In 1815 he was appointed Minister to France, where he remained until 1823. He refused a seat in the Cabinet of President Monroe on his return and also declined to be a candidate for Vice President to which the dominant Democratic Party nominated him.

President Adams appointed him Minister to Great Britain, where he negotiated several important commercial conventions.

Returning to America in 1827, he took up his residence in New York City. There he was engaged in public service in various ways until 1839, when he withdrew from public duties and directed the remainder of his life to literary pursuits.

Although strictly in private life, Gallatin took special interest in the progress of the country, and wrote much on the subject. His published works include such subjects as finance, politics and ethnology.

Mr. Gallatin was chief founder, in 1842, and the first president of the American Ethnological Society, and was president of the New York Historical Society from 1843 until his death, August 12, 1849, at Astoria, L. I.