Robert R. Livingston’s great-grandfather assured his family would be numbered among New York’s aristocracy through a mixture of hard work, sheer determination and a copious amount of intelligence. The first Robert Livingston, referred to as “the Founder” or “the First Lord”, was the son of a Scottish minister who had been driven to exile in the Netherlands when he resisted the effort to convert the Scottish Presbyterian Church into an Episcopalian Church. He was descended from Scottish nobility, whose earldom had been in Linlithgow and Callendar, between Stirling and Edinburgh near the Firth of Forth. Robert arrived in New York in 1675 to make his way as a fur trader. Not content with the simple life of a merchant, he soon began acquiring titles for himself, including Secretary of Albany, Secretary to Nicholas Van Rensselaer and Secretary for Indian Affairs.
It was Robert the Founder’s relationship with the Van Rensselaers that proved most fruitful though. In 1629 Kiliaen Van Rensselaer, a Dutch diamond merchant, had purchased a 700,000 acre patroonship, essentially a private colony within the colony of New Netherland. On this land, which was called Rensselaerswijk, Kiliaen held the rights for everything except the fur trade which was the exclusive domain of the Dutch West India Company, which administered the colony. Kiliaen died without having ever visited his land in the new world. Rensselarswijk was inherited by his children, including sons Jeremias, Jan Baptiste and Nicholas, who were able to obtain a patent for the land when the English took over the colony in 1664 and maintain it through the rapid English to the Dutch to the English transfer of the colony in 1673-1674. In 1679, as his boss Nicholas lay on his death bed, Robert was brought to his side to draft a will. According to family tradition Nicholas demanded Robert be removed as he would soon marry his widow. When Nicholas died, Robert married his young widow Alida Schuyler Van Rensselaer within a few months. This marriage put Robert among the leading families of the colony. He also laid claim to her “inheritance”, which in his opinion included a large part of Rensselaerswyck, including a very valuable farm across the river from Albany called Crailo after the Van Rensselaer family estate in the Netherlands.
When the ensuing lawsuits threatened to destabilize the colony by exposing the fact that the Van Rensselaers had not honored the original conditions of the agreement under which they purchased their land by not paying the other investors in the land, Governor Thomas Dongan brokered a deal between Livingston and the Van Rensselaers that saw the return of Van Rensselaer land to them in exchange for a payment made to Livingston. In addition, Livingston received patents for two pieces of land, about 2,000 acres along the Hudson River near the mouth of the Roeliff Jansen Kill and 600 acres along the Massachusetts border, he had earlier purchased. A year and a day after this deal was agreed to, Livingston received a third patent which granted him all the land between his two other properties and created the whole lot of about 160,000 acres; Livingston Manor and Robert Livingston was named Lord of the Manor.[i]
In 1709 Livingston dealt a small piece, about 6,000 acres, of that land back to the crown in be used to settle Palatine refugees, people from various German states looking to escape the constant warfare that had raged back and forth across their homelands for generations. In return for selling the land Livingston was given the contract to keep those refugees supplied with food and other necessities of life. The goal of this scheme, cooked up by Livingston and Governor Robert Hunter, was for the British government to transport thousands of refugees from the German States, at that point located in several camps around London, to the land Hunter purchased from Livingston. In return for setting up them with supplies and shelter, the Palatines would work to create naval stores for the British Navy. Livingston was careful in what land he sold. While the Palatines would technically be off his manor and not paying rent when in their homes, the forests and land they were to work for the naval stores were still his. Livingston would get his land cleared and infrastructure, such as roads and bridges, built for free, which would be useful in attracting more tenants who would pay rent to him. In the end the scheme failed because the evergreen trees on Livingston Manor were not the proper trees for producing pitch and turpentine in the quantities needed by the ever growing British navy. Facing starvation on small farms that could not support them, many of the Palatines moved to the Schoharie Valley to farms donated to the refugees by several Iroquois chiefs who felt pity for the desperate refugees on a visit to England, some stayed to eke out an existence on the land they had been given by the British government and others signed leases to become tenants on Livingston Manor.[ii]
When Robert the Founder died in 1728 the manor was divided. The majority of the manor, and the title Lord of the Manor were given to Robert’s oldest surviving son Philip, thereafter known as the Second Lord. 13,000 acres were carved off of the south end of the manor and given to Robert the Founder’s younger son Robert. It is unclear why Robert the First Lord chose to divide the manor. Family legend has it that the younger Robert saved his father and the rest of the family from an Indian attack. As the story goes, he had recently returned from Europe, where he was educated, and was awoken one night by sounds from the fireplace. When he investigated he found a pair of legs sticking out of the chimney. Assuming that it was not St. Nicholas paying an early visit, he grabbed the legs and raised the alarm. The legs belonged to the first of a band of Indians intent on sacking the house and murdering the family. The natives, with the element of surprise gone, retreated into the night.[iii] It is more likely however that the elder Robert was following a more typically Dutch system of inheritance in which land was divided between all heirs and not just the oldest son as was typical for the English. All of Robert’s children were left something in the will.
The younger Robert built a home upon his land which he called Clermont, and became known as Robert of Clermont. Robert married Margaret Howarden and had one son, whom he named Robert.
As an adult this third Robert held several judicial positions in colonial New York, and thus is remembered as Robert the Judge. Robert the Judge was an early opponent of British taxation on the colonies, sitting at the Stamp Act Congress, although he despised the idea of a mob led revolution. When sailors and mechanics threatened to riot against the crown in the streets of New York, the Judge was seen in the streets encouraging them to return to their homes and ships.
Robert the Judge married, Margaret Beekman, the daughter of Colonel Henry Beekman, owner of the Beekman Patent, another vast landholding in Dutchess County just south of Clermont. Margaret and Robert produced several children who would help to shape the country. One of their sons, Henry Beekman Livingston, would rise to the rank of colonel in the Continental Army, serving in the Battle of New York, in Canada, at Valley Forge, at Monmouth and in Rhode Island. Their youngest son, Edward, was an aide-de-camp to Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans and served as Secretary of State during Jackson’s presidency. Margaret and the Judge’s oldest daughter, Janet, married General Richard Montgomery. Daughter Margaret, married Thomas Tillotson, a Continental Army surgeon who later became New York State Secretary of State, Alida married General John Armstrong who later became Secretary of War and Gertrude married Morgan Lewis, an army officer, son of a signer of the Declaration of Independence and third governor of New York. Another daughter, Catherine, married the Reverend Freeborn Garretson, who was largely responsible for bringing Methodism to the Hudson River Valley.
But it was their oldest son, born in 1746, who of all Robert and Margaret’s children should be counted amongst the founders of the United States of America. The fourth Robert, remembered as “the Chancellor”, was the apple of his father’s eye. The Judge frequently wrote that the younger Robert was “possessing great talents which must not be buried on a farm.”[iv]
Robert grew up grew up with a kind of wealth not unlike a feudal lord or the prince of kingdom. When Robert came to Clermont in the summer from the family’s home at 51 Queen Street in New York City he would have been able to step out of the house and walk for nearly a day in any direction without leaving the family’s land. Most of the people he would have seen would have been tenants of his family. Bread on the tables would have come from flour ground at Livingston mills. Deliveries were made on Livingston sloops. Buildings were constructed with lumber cut at Livingston lumber mills.[v]
After the French and Indian War ended the prosperity the family enjoyed was threatened. Taxes passed by Parliament required payment in hard currency. The Livingstons, like many large land owners, operated in a world of credit. Sometimes the only means for raising quick cash was to sell land. A world in which their land holdings would constantly shrink whenever cash was needed was unacceptable. Just as unacceptable was the idea that the common people, harangued into action by the fiery speeches of Samuel Adams and his ilk, should rise up and throw off the British, for surely they would throw off the aristocracy with them.
[i] For information on Livingston’s dealings with the Van Rensselaers and the creation of Livingston Manor see Leder, Lawrence H. Robert Livingston and the Politics of Colonial New York, 1654-1728 University of North Carolina Press 2012 and The Correspondence of Maria Van Rensselaer 1669-1689
[ii] For information on Livingston and the Palatine land deal see Otterness, Philip Becoming German
[iii] Livingston, Edwin Brckholst The Livingstons of Livingston Manor Privately Printed at the Knickerbocker Press, New York 1910 p144-145.
[iv] Delafield, Julia Biographies of Francis Lewis and Morgan Lewis Anson D.F. Randolph & Company, New York 1877 p 143.
[v] Hunt, Charles Havens Life of Edward Livingston D. Appleton and Company, New York 1864 p 57.
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