[1] He was a son of Anne Marie, Countess d'Escherny (1820–1901) and Henri, Count de Pourtalès-Gorgier (1815–1876), the last Lord of Gorgier.
Senator William Hunter) and James-Alexandre de Pourtalès, a Swiss-French banker, diplomat and art collector who built the Pourtalès mansion and served as chamberlain to the King of Prussia Frederick William III.
[10] Before her death on a train on 15 May 1873, they were the parents of one daughter:[7] After his wife's death in 1873, while in Baltimore, Maryland, he met and became engaged to Marie-Adéle Boozer (1852–1908), a stepdaughter[8](p18) of David Boozer and the former wife of John S. Beecher, with whom she had a son, John Preston Beecher (later the U.S. Vice Consul in Le Havre and Consul at Cognac).
[8] After their wedding, they went to Shanghai and Hong Kong where they were entertained by Governor John Pope Hennessy before returning to France.
[8](p16) The Countess de Pourtalès died 25 January 1908 at their twenty-five room Villa Terrarossa near Toscana, just three miles from Florence in Italy.