Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 2).djvu/612

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580
GALLISON
GALLITZIN

deaf, and dumb, regarding the system pursued in the United States. Trinity college, Hartford, gave him the degree of LL. I), in 1869, and Columbian university that of Ph. D. in the same year. He is the author of a popular " Manual of International Law " (1879), and " Life of Thomas Hopkins Gal- laudet " (New York, 1888).


GALLISON, John, lawyer, b. in Marblehead, Mass., in October, 1788; d. 25 Dec, 1820. After he was graduated at Harvard, in 1807, he studied law and practised in Marblehead, and then removed to Boston. For several years he edited the " Weekly Messenger," and advocated plans for the gradual abolition of slavery in the United States. He pub- lished " Reports in the Circuit Court " (2 vols., 1807; 2d ed., Boston, 1845), and an "Address" to the Peace society, of which he was a member.


GALLITZIN, Demetrius Augustine, clergy- man, b. in the Hague, Holland, 22 Dec, 1770; d. in Loretto, Cambria co., Pa., G May, 1841. His father was Russian ambassador to Holland. The Gallitzin family was one of the oldest and noblest in Russia, and had always exercised a great and sometimes a controlling influence in the affairs of that country. The mother of the young prince was a daughter of Field-Marshal Count von Schmet- tau, one of the favorite generals of Frederick the Great. Both father and mother were admirers of Voltaire and Diderot, and their son was brought up without religious training. In 1786 the prin- cess, after a severe illness, returned to the Roman Catholic church, of which she had once been a member. A year afterward Demetrius also became a Christian, taking the name of Augustine on his conversion. He served as aide-de-camp to the Austrian genei-al. Van Lilien, in 1792, in the first campaign against France. Before its close he was dismissed, the Austrian government having decid- ed to discharge foreign officers. His parents now wished him to travel, and the unsettled state of the continent determined them to send Demetrius to the United States. The Rev. Felix Brosius was appointed his tutor. To avoid the inconvenience of rank, he took the name of Augustine Schmettau, which was afterward Americanized into Smith, and was borne by him for some time after his ordina- tion. Supplied with letters of introduction from the prince-bishops of Hildesheim and Paderborn to Bishop Carroll, to whom his mother confided him, he sailed from Rotterdam, 18 Aug., 1792. He ar- rived in Baltimore on 28 Oct., shortly afterward expressed a wish to become a priest, and entered the seminary of St. Sulpice, Baltimore, with this intention. Both his parents were dissatisfied with his choice, and his father, who had procured him a commission in the Russian army, begged him to come home, saying that his becoming a priest would of itself prevent his succession to the family inheritance. The young prince, however, perse- vered, and was ordained on 18 March, 1795. He was the second priest ordained in the United States, and the first who received holy orders in this country, as the Rev. Theodore Bazin had been made deacon in France before coming to America. Desiring to remain in the seminary. Father Gallit- zin, or Father Smith, as he was then called, be- came a member of the order of Sulpitians. But Bishop Carroll, with a view to recruiting his health, sent him to the mission at Port Tobacco. Finding that he was not improving, the bishop directed him to go to the extensive mission of which Conewago was the centre, and at which his friend. Father Brosius, then was. His reply to the bishop was of such a character as to call forth a severe repri- mand and a summons to Baltimore. Here he was placed in charge of all the German Catholics of the city. In 1796 he entered on tlie Conewago mission, residing in Taneytown, and visiting sev- eral places in Maryland and Pennsylvania. The zeal of the young priest was not always according to prudence. His too great haste to correct abuses, and the complaints made of his arbitrary meas- ures, called forth a second letter of admonition from Bishop Carroll in 1798. In 1799 the Roman Catholics of Maguire's settlement petitioned the bishop for a resident pastor. Father Gallitzin was appointed, and at once set about the work of estab- lishing a Roman Catholic colony. The district he selected for this purpose was one of the wildest and most uncultivated of the Alleghanies, in what is now Cambria county. Pa. It contained hardly a dozen Roman Catholic families. In 1800 he had a church built of pine logs, the only one between Lancaster and St. Louis. He bought more than 20,000 acres, and invited settlers, supplying them with homes on easy terms, and waiting until such time as they would be able to pay for them. But his expectation of realizing from his inherited es- tates made him incur obligations which for a long time were a source of humiliation and embarrass- ment. His father died in 1803, and his relatives in Russia immediately took possession of the es- tates. It was thought by his mother that his pres- ence in Russia would be advantageous to his inter- ests, but no consideration could prevail on him to leave the settlement he had founded. By her ad- vice he appointed three noblemen his agents, with full power of attorney to bring suit against his relatives, while she, in the event of failure, took steps to secure the property for herself, through her contract of marriage. He built a village, which he named Loretto. in 1803, on his own land. It is situated about four miles northwest of Cresson station, on the Pennsylvania railroad, and at the time of his death had a population of 150. He used his influence to have it made the capital of Cambria county when the latter was laid out, but without success, and, as he was the agent for sev- eral firms in Philadelphia and other large cities for the sale of lands in western Pennsylvania, the formation of the new county only multiplied his business and increased his embarrassments. Up to the death of his mother in 1806 he had received remittances from her regularly. Although the emperor of Russia decided in 1808 that, having be- come a Roman Catholic priest, he could inherit no part of his father's property, his sister, the Princess Maria, continued for some time to send him large suras, which he employed in meeting his engage- ments, but on her marriage with the penniless Prince of Salm this resource also failed. Mean- while his colony began to branch out and lay the foundation of other congregations at Ebensburg. Carrolltown, St. Augustine, VVilmore, Summitville, and several other parts of Pennsylvania, and as, owing to the scarcity of priests, he could not ob- tain an assistant, his labors were unceasing. In 1809 he passed from the jurisdiction of the arch- bishop of Baltimore to that of the newly appoint- ed bishop of Philadelphia. His real name also had become generally known, and as he had been natu- ralized as Augustine Smith, the legislature, on his petition, gave him the right to resume that of De- metrius Augustine Gallitzin. In 1811 he was vis- ited by Bishop Egan, of Philadelphia, and confir- mation was administered for the first time in the part of the diocese of Pittsburg lying west of the Alleghanies. The name of Father Gallitzin had now become famous, and he was spoken of for the see of Bardstown, Ky. He was actually nominated