The son Jean, born the year following the marriage, eventually became
his father's partner in the family business. In 1755 Jean married Sophie
Albertine Rolaz du Rosey from the town of Rolle, a few miles up the
lake. Jean and Sophie had two children: Susanne, born in 1756, and
Albert--who was to bring the family international renown--born five
years later when his parents were living at 7 rue des Granges.

Albert's memory of his own immediate family was faint. Jean Gal-
latin died in the summer of 1765, when Albert was only four. Mme.
Gallatin-Rolaz, whom her son recalled as possessing "talent and great
energy," then became a dealer in watches in her own name; but she
died in April, 1770, when he was nine. In 1777 his sister died; but the
loss was less poignant, as she had been under treatment at Montpellier,
the French medical center, for a nervous affliction since infancy, and he
remembered seeing her only once after the death of their father.

Arrangements had been made for young Albert long before his
mother's death. To allow herself freedom to attend to her business,
Mme. Gallatin-Rolaz had arranged with Catherine Pictet, a distant relative
of Jean Gallatin and her own most intimate friend, to act as the boy's
guardian. Mlle. Pictet had reached middle age without acquiring a hus-
band; she had ample means and more than ample love to lavish upon a
foster son. On January 8, 1766, just before his fifth birthday, Albert went
to live with her in her apartment on the Grand Rue; and from that
day forward he was, in effect, her child.

Mlle. Pictet reared Albert with a frugality characteristically Genevan.
He lived under her roof and was privately tutored until he was twelve
years old, during which time her expenditures for him, according to the
records she conscientiously kept, never exceeded eighty dollars a year.
In January, 1773, he entered the College of Geneva, probably boarding
with a master, and in August, 1775, in his fifteenth year, he matriculated
at the Academy of Geneva. His expenses during these school days aver-
aged slightly more than $200 a year, a sizable portion of which was met
by the Bourse Gallatin, a trust that had been set up by one François Gal-
latin at the close of the seventeenth century for the aid and relief of
members of the family. ⁴ Although Albert was an orphan, the tradition of
the Gallatin family hovered over him and provided for him all the
days of his youth.

As important to Albert Gallatin as the heritage of his family during
his formative years was the city of his birth. For in the eighteenth cen-

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