Neither did the affairs of the wilderness wholly debar intercourse with the civilized world. Visiting Richmond every winter, he gradually extended the circle of his acquaintance, and increased his personal influence; he also occasionally passed a few weeks at Philadelphia. Two visits to Maine are recorded in his diary, but whether they were of pleasure merely does not appear. One was in 1788, in midwinter, by stage and sleigh. On this excursion he descended the Androscoggin and crossed Merrymeeting Bay on the ice, returning by the same route in a snowstorm, which concealed the banks on either side of the river, so that he governed his course by the direction of the wind. With the intellect of a prime minister he had the constitution of a pioneer. On one of these occasions he intended to visit his old friends and hosts, the Lesderniers, but the difficulty of finding a conveyance, and the rumor that the old gentleman was away from home, interfered with his purpose. He remembered their kindness, and later attempted to obtain pensions for them from the United States government.
But the time now arrived when the current of his domestic life was permanently diverted, and set in other channels. In May, 1789, he married Sophie Allègre, the daughter of William Allègre of a French Protestant family living at Richmond. The father was dead, and the mother took lodgers, of whom Gallatin was one. For more than a year he had addressed her and secured her affections. Her mother now refused her consent, and no choice was left to the young lovers but to marry without it. Little is known of this short but touching episode in Mr. Gallatin's life. The young lady was warmly attached to him, and the letter written to her mother asking forgiveness for her marriage is charmingly expressed and full of feeling. They passed a few happy months at Friendship Hill, when suddenly she died. From this time Mr. Gallatin lost all heart in the western venture, and his most earnest wish was to turn his back forever upon Fayette County. In his suffering he would have returned to Geneva to Mademoiselle Pictet, could he have sold his Virginia lands. But this had become impossible at any price, and he had no other pecuniary resource but the generosity of his family.