Classes and Algebras: Which begat which?

Question

Way back in the day I took a course on discrete structures and learned about how the mathematical notion of an algebra is akin to the class data type.

But I didn't know enough at the time to ask whether algebras are used to model classes or whether classes are actually derived from algebras (historically, technically...in whatever sense of 'derived' you like).

Wikipedia and Google weren't much help. Anyone have any idea?