Background
Kalb was born on June 19, 1721 in Erlangen, Germany, the son of Johann Leonhard Kalb and Margarethe Seitz.
Kalb was born on June 19, 1721 in Erlangen, Germany, the son of Johann Leonhard Kalb and Margarethe Seitz.
Kalb was schooled at Kriegenbronn to be a waiter.
Kalb left home at the age of sixteen. By 1743 he was a lieutenant known as Jean de Kalb in the French service; by 1747 he was a captain and adjutant; and by 1756 he had become a major. The distinction he won under Victor François, duc de Broglie, in the Seven Years' War led to his marriage, on April 10, 1764, to Anna Elizabeth Emilie van Robais, whose fortune encouraged him to retire as "Baron de Kalb. " However, his political acumen and recommendation by de Broglie brought him to Philadelphia, in January 1768, as a secret agent of France. Later relieved of this assignment after returning to Paris, de Kalb remained interested in America. He arranged the Marquis de Lafayette's first meeting with Silas Deane, and then sailed with Lafayette to America. Commissioned a major general by Congress as of September 15, 1777, de Kalb joined Washington's army before the Valley Forge encampment, held commands in New Jersey, and was Lafayette's second in command during an abortive Canadian expedition. He led the Maryland and Delaware troops that joined forces in July 1780, under General Horatio Gates, commander of the southern armies. Near Camden, South Carolina, after Gates's divisions broke under an attack by General Charles Cornwallis on August 16, 1780, de Kalb continued to charge until wounded several times. One of the outstanding foreign officers of the Revolutionary War, de Kalb died in Camden three days later. In 1825 Lafayette laid the cornerstone for de Kalb's monument in Camden.
French Army, Continental Army (1777-1780)
In 1764, de Kalb resigned from the army and married Anna Elizabeth Emilie van Robais, an heiress to a fortune from cloth manufacturing.