Friendship Hill - Point Marion, PA - American Guide Series on Waymarking.com

FRIENDSHIP HILL (open 10-5 daily; adm. 50¢), 7.1 m., was for more than 40 years the home of Albert Gallatin (1761-1849), Secretary of the Treasury under Jefferson and Madison. Woodland covers most of the 700-acre estate, where, in 1789, Gallatin built a brick house, since stuccoed; an addition was made in 1823. This two-and-one-half-story, ivy-colored building, L-shaped in plan and set among tall trees, adheres to no particular style, but has considerable charm and quaintness. Furnishings of the period, candelabra, and works of art embellish the interior.

Descended from a long line of 'uncompromising autocrats,' Gallatin was offered, on being graduated from the University of Geneva, a post with the Hessian troops then serving in America. He refused to 'serve a tyrant' and, attracted by the militancy of the young republic, sailed for Boston at the age of 19. Here he joined the American forces and after Cornwallis' surrender returned to Boston as a French instructor at Harvard University. Gallatin's interest in the wild country in western Pennsylvania led him to settle in the present Fayette County, then a part of Virginia, in 1784. After filling several State and Federal posts, he was appointed Secretary of the Treasury by President Jefferson in 1801. Retiring from the cabinet in 1814, he later held several diplomatic posts. Between 1831 and 1839 he was president of the National Bank of New York, and the last years of his life were spent in writing: he considered his published Indian studies the most valuable of all his works.