Albert Gallatin, U.S. diplomat and secretary of the treasury, was born on 29 January 1761 in Geneva, Switzerland. A graduate of the University of Geneva, he moved to Boston in 1780 and taught French at Harvard. Eventually he settled in Pennsylvania, where he worked as a farmer and storekeeper. With his election to a Pennsylvania convention to consider changes to the U.S. Constitution, Gallatin began a public career that would include service as a state legislator (1790–92), U.S.