Paulus Balliet (1717-1777)
Early Life
Paulus Balliet was the first Balliet to come to the Lehigh Valley [1], arriving from Alsace, France to America on September 10, 1738 [2]. Balliet left France to escape the religious persecution of French Protestants, Huguenots, which had begun following the repeal of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 [3].
Family
Paulus Balliet married Maria Magdelena Wotring, also a Huguenot. Together they had nine children (Jordan, Green, and Ettinger 1905: 48).
Business =
On April 12, 1749 Paulus Balliet applied to purchase 97 acres and 100 perches of land (officially deeded in 1761) that would become the “old Balliet farm” [4]. A warrant for the surveying of this land was granted to Balliet on October 9, 1759 [5]. Paulus ran an inn and a store that were clearly successful for between 1749 and 1774, he purchased another 713 acres 131 perches (Mathew and Hungerford 1884: 510-511).
Notes
References
- Mathews, Alfred, and Austin N Hungerford. 1884. History of the Counties of Lehigh and Carbon, in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: Everts & Richards.