Prince Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin was an emigre Russian aristocrat and Roman Catholic priest known as The Apostle of the Alleghenies.
Background
Prince Dimitri Dmitrievich Gallitzin was born into a world of inherited privilege December 22, 1770 at The Hague. His father, Prince Dimitri Alexeievich, the Russian ambassador to the Netherlands, was an intimate friend of Voltaire and a follower of Diderot. His mother was the Prussian Countess Adelheid Amalie von Schmettau, the daughter of Field Marshall Samuel von Schmettau.
When Prince Demitri was about two years old the Empress Catherine the Great visited The Hague, and as a sign of special favor to his father, cradled the child in her arms, and appointed the boy an officer of the guard. He was raised as a nominal member of the Russian Orthodox Church, although his father, like many Russian aristocrats of his age, had little connection to or fondness for religion. As was fashionable at the time, the language of the household was French, which was Prince Dmitri's native tongue.
Career
After his mother's return to Catholicism in 1786, he was greatly influenced by her circle of intellectuals, priests, and aristocrats. At the age of 17, Prince Dimitri was formally received into the Roman Catholic church. To please his mother, whose birth (1748), and marriage (1768), occurred on 28 August, the feast of Saint Augustine, he assumed at confirmation that name, and thereafter wrote his name Demetrius Augustine. A cousin, Elizabeth Gallitzin, would also eventually convert and join the Society of the Sacred Heart, founding a number of religious houses in the United States.
His father had planned for him a diplomatic or military career, and in 1792 he was aide-de-camp to the commander of the Austrian troops in Brabant; but, after the assassination of the king of Sweden, he, like all other foreigners, was dismissed from the service. He then set out to complete his education by travel, and on the 28th of October 1792 arrived in Baltimore, Maryland, where he finally decided to enter the priesthood. He was ordained priest in March 1795, being the first Roman Catholic priest ordained in America, and then worked in the mission at Port Tobacco, Maryland, whence he was soon transferred to the Conewago district.
His impulsive objection to some of Bishop Carroll's instructions was sharply rebuked, and he was recalled to Baltimore. But in 1796 he removed to Taneytown, Maryland, and in both Maryland and Pennsylvania worked with such misdirected zeal and autocratic manners that he was again reproved by his bishop in 1798. In the Alleghanies, in 1799, he planned a settlement in what is now Cambria county, Pennsylvania, and bought up much land which he gave or sold at low prices to Catholic immigrants, spending $150, 000 or more in the purchase of some 20, 000 acres in a spot singularly ill suited for such an enterprise.
In 1808, after his father's death, he was disinherited by the emperor Alexander I of Russia "by reason of your Catholic faith and your ecclesiastical profession "; and although his sister Anne repeatedly promised him his half of the valuable estate and sent him money from time to time, after her death her brother received little or nothing from the estate. The priest, who after his father's death had in 1809 discarded the name of Augustine Smith, under which he had been naturalized, and had taken his real name, was soon deeply in debt.
In 1815 Gallitzin was suggested for the bishopric of Bardstown, Kentucky, and in 1827 for the proposed see of Pittsburg, and he refused the bishopric of Cincinnati. He died at Loretto, the settlement he had founded in Cambria county, on tne 6th of May 1840.
Religion
Notwithstanding his various duties, Father Gallitzin found time to publish several tracts in defense of Catholicism. Among his controversial pamphlets are: A Defence of Catholic Principles (r816), Letter to a Protestant Friend on the Holy Scriptures (1820), Appeal to the Protestant Public (1834), and Six Letters of Advice (T834), in reply to attacks on the Catholic Church by a Presbyterian synod.