Her father, a descendant of the politician and diplomat Albert Gallatin, was a Harvard-educated attorney, planter and Virginia congressman who served as a general with the Confederate Army during the American Civil War.

[5][6] In February 1886 she appeared with Madame Janish at the Leubrie Theatre, Memphis playing a flirtatious baroness in Princess Anréa, an adaptation of Victorien Sardou's Andréa: Comedie En Quatre Actes, Six Tableaux.

[11] On the afternoon of February 12, 1887, following a matinée performance of Lady Audley's Secret at the Masonic Opera House in Augusta, Georgia, a fire broke out that destroyed the theater and nearby Globe and Central hotels.

[18] In late 1890 she was engaged by a touring company headed by James O’Neil to play Catherine Duvall to his Henry Irving in Walter Herries Pollock's revision of the Watts Phillips story The Dead Heart.

[22] Gallatin drew critical praise when on May 26, 1892, she appeared at the Madison Square Theatre in a special matinee performance of Shakespeare's "As You Like It", playing Rosalind to the Orlando of Otis Skinner.

[23] During the latter years of the closing decade of the 19th century Gallatin appeared with E. H. Sothern in Robert N. Stephens' An Enemy to the King, Minnie Maddern Fiske in Marguerite Merington's Love Finds the Way, and Chauncey Olcott in Augustus Pitou's Sweet Inniscarra.

[5][26] The following spring she was in Denver with the Giffen Stock Company performing at the Tabor Grand Opera House[27] and that fall she was chosen to replace Grace Atwell as the leading actress at the Girard Avenue Theatre, Philadelphia.

[28] In January 1900 Gallatin played Mrs. Bulford at Boston's Castle Square Theatre in The Great Diamond Robbery, a crime thriller by Edward M. Alfriend and Andrew Carpenter Wheeler (aka Nym Crinkle).

[30] In late March 1900 Gallatin began a long tour playing the title role in Clyde Fitch's controversial play Sappho that had made its Broadway debut earlier in the year with Olga Nethersole;[31][32] Nell Gwyn in Harold Cator Heverin's Under the Restoration (1900–01);[33] Rosalind in Shakespeare's comedy As You Like It (1903);[34] Mrs. Alving in Ibsen's domestic tragedy, Ghosts (1903–04);[35] Tracy Auberton in A Clean Slate (1905), a comedy by R. C. Carton (Richard Claud Critchett);[36] Kate Curtis in the Hubert Henry Davies social comedy Cousin Kate (1906);[37] the title role in her dramatization of Charles Major's novel Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall (1907);[38] and the starring role in Marie Manning's Judith of the Plains (1907–08), a Western romance adapted for the stage by Algernon Tassln and Mary Stone.