San Francisco County
Biographies
ALBERT
GALLATIN
The late Albert Gallatin, represented in the Encyclopedia of American Biography as “one of the foremost hardware merchants of early California and a pioneer in the development of hydro-electric power and power transmission,” filled a place of importance in the cities of Sacramento and San Francisco, California, and in the Pacific coast states and Mexico. Mr. Gallatin was born near Avon, Livingston county, New York, December 10, 1835, son of Daniel and Jane (Gray) Gallatin. The father, Daniel Gallatin, was a native of Switzerland, and was distantly related to Albert Gallatin, secretary of the treasury under Jefferson. He was a sea captain, and at the age of twenty-five was master of an ocean vessel sailing from England. He was an able navigator and sailed to all parts of the world. In 1811 he settled in Baltimore, Maryland, and in the following year, upon the declaration of war with England, he joined the United States Navy. He was at once commissioned a captain and given command of the “Serapis,” the flagship of Commodore Joshua Barney. He later assisted in the defense of Fort MacHenry, and also participated in the battle of Bladensburg. He was personally acquainted with Francis Scott Key, who, looking out at Fort MacHenry the morning after the attack and seeing the stars and stripes still flying, wrote the immortal national anthem, “The Star Spangled Banner,” which was first published in the Baltimore “American” soon afterward. In recognition of his services in the War of 1812, Daniel Gallatin was given a land grant of one hundred and sixty acres in the state of Kansas. The sword given him by the government and worn by him through the War of 1812 was one of the most cherished possessions of his son. For nine years after being mustered out in 1814 he sailed a Liverpool packet out of Baltimore, one of the finest lines of freight and passenger vessels of that day. He then removed to Livingston county, New York, where he engaged in farming, and also sailed as a captain on Lake Erie until his death in February, 1851, at the age of sixty-six years. He was a man of strong character and great determination. His wife, Jane (Gray) Gallatin, mother of the man whose name heads this review, was a native of New York state, a daughter of the Rev. Andrew Gray, a Presbyterian minister, and an officer in the New York Levies in the war of the American Revolution. He was later a missionary among the Tonawanda and Cherokee tribes in western New York; and his daughter, Jane, was the first white child born in Allegheny county, New York. She was born April 1, 1799, and died in 1870.
Albert Gallatin attended the public schools of western New York, and completed his formal studies with a course in a commercial college in Baltimore. He went at once to Hudson, Michigan, where for several years he was employed in a hardware store. In 1860 he took passage on a steamer for California from New York by way of Panama. Upon his arrival in San Francisco he went at once to Sacramento, and from there to Siskiyou county, in the northern part of the state, where he was engaged in mining for one year. He returned to Sacramento and in 1861 he entered the employ of Huntington and Hopkins, “54K,” then the largest hardware, iron and steel house on the Pacific coast. Here he soon won the esteem of his employers for integrity and business ability; and when, in 1864, he decided to go in business for himself and established a hardware house in Dayton, Nevada, near the mines, he was given a credit of twenty thousand dollars by Mark Hopkins, one of the partners of Huntington and Hopkins. This business he conducted successfully until 1868, when Huntington and Hopkins, together with Crocker and Stanford, undertook the project of building the Central Pacific Railroad.
From the first location of a route for the Central Pacific Railroad, which party Albert Gallatin assisted to fit out, he had been acquainted with its history and progress, and at the period just referred to, when he had been a year in Nevada, he became deeply impressed with the promise of the railroad enterprises in which Collis P. Huntington and Mark Hopkins were concerned, and with the weight of the hardware business which these undertakings involved, of which they had command; he saw also that as railroad affairs withdrew the personal attention of the heads of the house, they would be compelled to admit junior partners who could assume the active management of the business. Feeling that he had the confidence of the firm, and remembering that Mr. Hopkins has said it would have been better for him not to leave them, he yielded to a conviction that if he proposed to them to return as a junior partner he would be accepted, and wrote to them accordingly. Mr. Hopkins replied at once, expressing his pleasure that Mr. Gallatin had proposed the arrangement as it was just what he, as well as Mr. Huntington, desired. His offer was accepted. He was, thereupon, made managing partner, and from 1868 to 1888 served in that capacity. In 1888 the business was incorporated, and he became its president, so serving until 1894, when the entire enterprise was sold to Miller, Sloss and Scott of San Francisco.
A brief history of the firm, which was for many years the largest and best known hardware, iron and steel house on the Pacific coast, is worthy of record. It was established at No. 54 K street, Sacramento, California, by Collis P. Huntington, in 1849. In the following year he took in as a partner Mark Hopkins, with whom he had become acquainted on a sailing vessel en route to California in 1849 and who had been engaged in the grocery business in Sacramento. Later E. H. Miller, Jr., became a member of the firm, which was then changed to Huntington, Hopkins and Company. In January, 1868, four junior partners were admitted --Albert Gallatin, Charles Miller, Horace H. Seaton and W. R. S. Foye. The infusion of young blood, together with the inevitable increase of trade consequent upon an increase of population and the multiplication of new enterprises rapidlly enlarged the transactions of the house, Huntington, Hopkins and Company doing ten and twenty times the business of the original firm. Towards this success Mr. Gallatin contributed materially by well considered plans, and by sending out traveling salesman after the manner of eastern houses, this being one of the first houses in California or on the Pacific coast to solicit trade in this manner. In 1871 a San Francisco branch was established, but for many years the parent house did by far the larger business, and “54K” became known throughout the Pacific coast and Mexico. Mr. Seaton withdrew in 1876, and Mr. Hopkins died in 1879. In February, 1888, the business was incorporated as Huntington, Hopkins Company with Albert Gallatin as president, residing in San Francisco; Charles Miller, vice president, residing in New York; Collis P. Huntington, treasurer; and W. R. S. Foye, secretary. In 1894 the business was sold to Miller, Sloss and Scott. Later it became the Pacific Hardware and Steel Company, which was still later merged with the Baker-Hamilton Company, of San Francisco, as the Baker-Hamilton Pacific Company. For more than eighty years this has been the outstanding house of its kind on the Pacific coast. For twenty-six years, during the period of its greatest growth, Mr. Gallatin was its active head; and to him, more than any other one man, is due the success it attained. His progressive spirit and unusual vision were shown in many ways during that constructive period.
In 1872 Albert Gallatin organized and was the first president of the Citizens Gas Light and Heat Company of Sacramento. With this organization he served intermittently as president until the early ‘90s, when it was absorbed by the Capital Gas Company, of which he became president. He was first vice president of the California State Bank in Sacramento in 1889. In 1894 he became the principal organizer and president of the Sacramento Electirc Power and Light Company, and about the same time he purchased and became president of the Central Electric Railway Company of Sacramento. This was during the “hard times” of Grover Cleveland’s administration when the difficulty of getting financial assistance for a new enterprise of this kind was very great. It was an uphill struggle, but he was determined to win, and his determination caused others with the company to take heart. The result was that the organization was finally placed on a good paying basis, and those who watched the struggle and took a hand in it say that all the credit is due Albert Gallatin. On April 1, 1896, the Capital Gas Company, the Sacramento Electric Power and Light Company and the Central Electric Railway Company, were merged into the Sacramento Electric, Gas & Railway Company, of which he was for a number of years the president. This organization was later merged with the Pacific Gas and Electric Company.
Albert Gallatin was the pioneer in the development of hydro-electric power and first long distance transmission in California, having been the prime factor in the organization of the Folsom Water Power Company, which built a hydro-electric plant at Folsom and transmitted to Sacramento electric power for the lighting, power and street railway systems. This company was soon merged with the Sacramento Electric Power and Light Company. This project was completed on July 13, 1895, and on September 9, 1895, in celebration of this event, an electric carnival was held in Sacramento. It was so unusual and attracted so much interest that it was attended by people who came from all parts of the United States. A book entitled “Finances, History and Statistics,” published by the Pacific Gas and Electric Company in 1911, said:
“On Admission Day, September 9, 1895, the Folsom Water Power Company completed its transmission from Folsom to Sacramento, and a start was then made in hydro-electric work that was within a few short years to exceed the most sanguine hopes of its promoters.”
Albert Gallatin was also largely responsible for the development of northern California as a fruit growing region. In 1886 he started the first movement for holding citrous fairs in northern and central California to promote and encourage fruit growing in that part of the state. He brought about an organization of growers, and, beginning with 1886, arranged for annual fairs at Sacramento, giving the exhibitors the free use of his Arcade building and free light and gas, and securing for them half rates from the railway and express companies. The third year the exhibits of the Sacramento Citrous Fair were sent to Chicago, together with eighty thousand copies of citrous editions of the local papers for free distribution. This was only the start, however, of his plan for the promotion of the industry. Large sums were subscribed by him and his associates to secure the publication in the Chicago “Inter Ocean” and the San Francisco “Chronicle” of a series of articles regarding the soil, climate and the products of the northern half of California, in order to spread abroad the claims of the northern counties to being a fruit growers region. It is impossible to estimate the value of his activities in this direction and their influence upon the development that followed. But it was always his policy to create business by the development of the country.
From 1884 until his death in 1905, in addition to his extensive interests in the hardware, iron and steel business, the lumber business, the electric power and light, gas and street railway business, he was also interested in acquiring large tracts of land in the northern part of the state, where farming and stock-raising was carried on. He owned ranches in Tehama and Lassen counties aggregating fifty thousand acres, of which more than thirty thousand acres are still in the family. He was also heavily interested in business and residential properties in Kansas City, Missouri.
Albert Gallatin was a Knight Templar Mason and a Shriner. He was a member of the Pacific Union Club of San Francisco, and the Sutter Club of Sacramento. Although never an office holder, he took keen interest in civic affairs, and liberally encouraged and supported every movement for the betterment of the city and state and the welfare of the people. He contributed financially to many charitable institutions and worthy people, and showed especial benevolence in helping many young men to get their start, both in the matter of wise counsel and financial assistance.
So plainly does the narrative of Albert Gallatin’s life point out the value of steadfast purpose and honorable ambition founded on right principles that it would be obtrusive in his biographer to dilate upon these lessons. His features show causality unusually developed, as of a man who reasons by induction. He attended directly to the subject in hand, and looked his interlocutor squarely in the face when in conversation. Unobtrusive in his manners, he made and held friends by his frankness, and his courteous treatment of those with whom he was brought in contact. His associates learned to rely upon him on account of his quickness of apprehension, and precision in the conduct of his affairs. If there was one trait of which he was desirous to be, and was consciously proud, it was of his unflinching determination, and the success it had brought him. In religion he was a Congregationalist. He enjoyed entertaining his friends and was always the central figure and the life of any gathering he attended, being an interesting conversationalist and an unusually good story teller. He liked the beautiful things of life, including art, music and literature, and filled his home with them. His home was one of the show places of Sacramento. When Mr. Gallatin moved to San Francisco it was sold to the state and has since been occupied as the governor’s mansion.
In 1865 Mr. Gallatin married Nemie Rhoades, of Chicago, by whom he had three children. The eldest, Jane, who is the widow of Frank H. Powers of San Francisco, now resides in Paris, France, where she won acclaim as an artist. Her late husband, a very prominent representative of the legal profession, was a member of the firm of Heller, Powers & Ehrman, leading lawyers who acted as attorneys for the Wells Fargo Bank. Albert Gallatin, Jr., is a capitalist of San Francisco who has devoted himself principally to the management of the properties and interests established by his father. Grace is the wife of Ernest Thompson Seton, an eminent writer, artist, and lecturer of New York city. Mrs. Seton is president of the American Pen Women and a writer of great merit, among her many books being one entitled “A Woman Tenderfoot.” She is a world traveler and an entertaining lecturer.
On October 21, 1884, Mr. Gallatin married, second, Malvena Robin, daughter of Charles and Katherine Robin of Sacramento, who survives him, residing in San Francisco at the time of writing (1931). By this marriage there was one daughter, Leta, who is the widow of Dr. William P. Harvey of San Francisco.
Mr. Gallatin died at his home in San Francisco on October 14, 1905, and was interred at Cypress Lawn Cemetery. His passing was mourned by a host of friends throughout northern and central California, for no man stood higher in his day in the esteem and affection of his fellowmen. Many honors came to him even while living. Upon his removal to San Francisco in 1888, a banquet was tendered to him by all of the leading citizens of Sacramento to express their esteem and their regret at his leaving their city. For he contributed substantially to the well-being of that community. A life-sized oil portrait of Albert Gallatin hangs today in the “Pioneer Section” of the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco; and his name will go down in history as that of one of the most progressive, most constructive and most beloved pioneers of California.
Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
Source: Byington, Lewis Francis, “History of
San Francisco 3 Vols”, S. J. Clarke Publishing Co.,
Chicago, 1931. Vol. 2 Pages 252-262.
© 2007 Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
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