Existing comment:
Sophia Allegre:
1789 -- Over the past few years, Gallatin spent quite a bit of time in the Virginia capital of Richmond on business. There he frequented a boarding house run by Mrs. Jane Battersby Allegre, widow of William Allegre. He soon had other reasons to stay at the Allegre's besides the hospitality. Gallatin and Mrs. Allegre daughter, Sophia, became attracted to each other. Not much is known about Sophia. A descendent of French Huguenots and close to Gallatin's age, she fell desperately in love with her mother's tenant. Gallatin later writes to friend Badollet saying, "She [Sophia's mother] was furious, she refused me in the most brutal manner ... She did not want her daughter taken to the Pennsylvania frontier by a man without accomplishments, without fortune, who muttered English like a Frenchman who had been a schoolmaster at Cambridge. I laughed at most of her objections, I tried to respond to others, but I could not make her listen to reason... She is a she-devil whom her daughter fears horribly..." |