Robert Livingston the Elder

He was born in the village of Ancrum, near Jedburgh, in the County of Roxburgh, Scotland, one of seven children of the Reverend John Livingston, a lineal descendant of the fifth Lord Livingston, ancestor of the earls of Linlithgow and Callendar, a minister of the Church of Scotland, who was sent into exile in 1663 due to his resistance to attempts to turn the Presbyterian national church into an Episcopalian institution.

The exiled family were raised in Rotterdam, in the Dutch Republic, thus Robert Livingston was fluent in the Dutch language, which helped him greatly in his later career in the former Dutch colony of New Netherland.

Following the death of his father in 1673, Robert Livingston returned to Scotland and then sailed for Boston to find his fortune in North America. Livingston moved to Albany, New York where he became wealthy in the fur trade, and then obtained a patent to 160,000 acres (650 km²) that would become Livingston Manor in Columbia and Dutchess County.

With his brother-in-law Peter Schuyler, he led the opposition in Albany to Leisler's Rebellion. He served as Secretary for Indian Affairs from 1695 until his death. In 1696, he backed Captain William Kidd's privateer voyage on the Adventure Galley. He served as a representative to the New York provincial assembly in 1709–1711 and 1716–1725 and was elected speaker in 1718.

Livingston's son Gilbert was married to Cornelia Beekman (a granddaughter of Schenectady Mayor Wilhelm Beekman). Their daughter married New York Lt. Governor Pierre Van Cortlandt. One of the Van Cortlandts' daughters married Albany Mayor Philip Schuyler Van Rensselaer. Mrs. Van Cortlandt's sister-in-law married the great-grandson of New York Colony Governor Peter Stuyvesant. They were grandparents to New York Governor Hamilton Fish. Another daughter of Gilbert Livingston named Margaret Livingston married Peter Stuyvesant {1727-1805} also a great-grandson of Peter Stuyvesant. Their son Nicholas William Stuyvesant {1769-1833} married Catherine Livingston Reade-also a great-granddaugther of Gilbert Livingston.

Another relation was niece Catherine Schuyler, married into the De Peyster family; her son was loyalist Arent Schuyler De Peyster. Arent's nephew, Abraham De Peyster, was a loyalist Officer who served with the King's American Regiment and was at Battle of King's Mountain; Abraham was married to Catherine Livingston, a grandaugther of Philip Livingston {1686-1749 2nd Lord of the Manor}.

Notable descendants include Presidents of the United States George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush, the entire Fish and Kean families, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, actors Montgomery Clift and Michael Douglas, actress Jane Wyatt, poet Robert Lowell, cinematographer Floyd Crosby, his son David Crosby, author Wolcott Gibbs, and almost the entire Astor family.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Livingston_the_Elder

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http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=AHN&db=nschroed...

Robert LIVINGSTON was born 13 DEC 1654 in Ancrum, Scotland, and died AUG 1728 in Albany, New York.

Married: Alida SCHUYLER, who was born 28 FEB 1655/56 in Beverwyck, New Netherlands, and died MAY 1727 in Livingston Manor, New York. She was the daughter of Philip Pietersz SCHUYLER and Margarita VAN SLICHTENHORST.

Children of Alida SCHUYLER and Robert LIVINGSTON are:

i. John LIVINGSTON was born 26 APR 1680 in Albany, New York, and died 19 FEB 1719/20 in England. He married Mary WINTHROP 1 APR 1701. She died 8 JAN 1712/13. He married Elizabeth KNIGHT 2 OCT 1713. She died 17 MAR 1735/36.

ii. Margaret LIVINGSTON was born 5 DEC 1681 in Albany, New York, and died JUN 1758. She married Samuel VETCH 20 DEC 1700. He was born 6 DEC 1668, and died 30 APR 1732.

iii. Joanna Philipina LIVINGSTON was born 1 FEB 1683/84 in Albany, New York, and died 24 JUN 1690 in New York, New York.

iv. Philip LIVINGSTON was born 9 JUL 1686 in Albany, New York, and died 4 FEB 1748/49 in New York, New York. He married Catherine VAN BRUGH 19 SEP 1707 in Albany, New York. She was born 1689, and died 20 FEB 1756.

v. Robert R. LIVINGSTON was born 24 JUL 1688 in Albany, New York, and died 27 JAN 1755 in Clermont, New York. He married Margaret HOWARDEN 11 NOV 1717 in New York, New York. She died 1748.

vi. Gilbert LIVINGSTON was born 3 MAR 1689/90 in Albany, New York, and died 25 APR 1746 in Kingston, New York. He married Cornelia BEEKMAN 22 DEC 1711 in Kingston, New York. She was born 18 JUN 1693 in Kingston, New York, and died 24 JUN 1742.

vii. William LIVINGSTON was born 17 MAR 1691/92 in Albany, New York, and died 5 NOV 1692.

viii. Joanna LIVINGSTON was born 10 DEC 1694, and died ABT. 6 APR 1735. She married Cornelius Gerrit VAN HORNE 7 JUL 1720 in Albany, Albany, New York. He was born 1694 in New York, New York.

ix. Catherine LIVINGSTON was born 22 MAY 1698, and died 6 DEC 1699.

Robert Livingston the Elder (December 13, 1654 – October 1, 1728) was a New York colonial official, and first lord of Livingston Manor. He married Alida Schuyler (widow of Nicholas Van Rensselaer) in 1679. He was the father of nine children, including Philip, Robert and Gilbert. He was also uncle of Robert Livingston the Younger, grandfather of Philip Livingston and William Livingston.

Early life - He was born in the village of Ancrum, near Jedburgh, in the County of Roxburgh, Scotland, one of seven children of the Reverend John Livingston, a lineal descendant of the fifth Lord Livingston, ancestor of the earls of Linlithgow and Callendar, a minister of the Church of Scotland, who was sent into exile in 1663 due to his resistance to attempts to turn the Presbyterian national church into an Episcopalian institution. The exiled family were raised in Rotterdam, in the Dutch Republic, thus Robert Livingston was fluent in the Dutch language, which helped him greatly in his later career in the former Dutch colony of New York.

Career - Following the death of his father in 1673, Robert Livingston returned to Scotland and then sailed for Boston to find his fortune in North America. Livingston moved to Albany, New York where he became wealthy in the fur trade, and then obtained a patent to 160,000 acres (650 km²) that would become Livingston Manor in Columbia and Dutchess County.

With his brother-in-law Peter Schuyler, he led the opposition in Albany to Leisler's Rebellion. He served as Secretary for Indian Affairs from 1695 until his death. In 1696, he backed Captain William Kidd's privateer voyage on the Adventure Galley. He served as a representative to the New York provincial assembly in 1709–1711 and 1716–1725 and was elected speaker in 1718.

Family and descendants - Livingston's son Gilbert was married to Cornelia Beekman (a granddaughter of Schenectady Mayor Wilhelm Beekman). Their daughter married New York Lt. Governor Pierre Van Cortlandt. One of the Van Cortlandts' daughters married Albany Mayor Philip Schuyler Van Rensselaer. Mrs. Van Cortlandt's sister-in-law married the great-grandson of New York Colony Governor Peter Stuyvesant. They were grandparents to New York Governor Hamilton Fish. Another daughter of Gilbert Livingston named Margaret Livingston married Peter Stuyvesant {1727-1805} also a great-grandson of Peter Stuyvesant. Their son Nicholas William Stuyvesant {1769-1833} married Catherine Livingston Reade-also a great-granddaugther of Gilbert Livingston.

Another relation was niece Catherine Schuyler, married into the De Peyster family; her son was loyalist Arent Schuyler De Peyster. Arent's nephew, Abraham De Peyster, was a loyalist Officer who served with the King's American Regiment and was at Battle of King's Mountain; Abraham was married to Catherine Livingston, a grandaugther of Philip Livingston {1686-1749 2nd Lord of the Manor}.

Notable descendants include Presidents of the United States George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush, the entire Fish and Kean families, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, actors Montgomery Clift and Michael Douglas, actress Jane Wyatt, poet Robert Lowell, cinematographer Floyd Crosby, his son David Crosby, author Wolcott Gibbs, and almost the entire Astor family.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livingston_family

Migrated from Europe to Albany, New York where he became wealthy in the fur trade, and then obtained a patent to 160,000 acres that would become Livingston Manor in Columbia and Dutchess County. He was first lord of Livingston Manor.

He served as Secretary for Indian Affairs from 1695 until his death.

He was referred to in a biography as "the most important person to live in colonial Albany."

http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/albany/bios/l/rlivingston94.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Livingston_the_Elder

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Livingston_the_Elder

by

Stefan Bielinski

Although never elected to local office, Robert Livingston was the most important person to live in colonial Albany.Robert Livingston

Born in Scotland in 1654, the fourteenth child of John Livingston and Janet Fleming, he followed his father, a refugee Calvinist minister, to the Netherlands in 1663. Considerably younger and not close to his siblings, young Robert grew up in Rotterdam learning the intricacies of business and trade and becoming fluent in both English and Dutch. By 1670, he was keeping his own Dutch-language account book. Following the death of his father, in 1673 Robert Livingston returned to Scotland and then sailed for Boston to find his fortune in America.

Livingston's father was well-known in Puritan Boston where a merchant advanced the young son enough stock and credit to undertake a trading venture to Albany. Over the winter of 1674-75, Robert Livingston set up a store in the house of Gabriel Thomson and then purchased an Albany houselot the following Spring.

Livingston's business and muti-lingual capabilities placed him in great demand in the upper Hudson region. In August 1675, he became secretary of Rensselaerswyck; in September, clerk or secretary of the town of Albany; collector of the excise (tax); and then, secretary of the Albany Indian Commissioners. Coupled with personal trading and a partnership with New Englander Timothy Cooper, these offices should have provided him with substantial income. However, this newcomer experienced financial difficulty and frequently needed the intercession of Governor Edmund Andros to collect his fees. That connection to the English in New York - although of great value to Livingston personally, prevented him from gaining acceptance in still-Dutch Albany.

Local shunning and dunning abated considerably following his marriage in 1679 to Alida Schuyler, sister of future mayor Pieter Schuyler and the recent widow of Nicholas Van Rensselaer - formerly Livingston's Rensselaerswyck employer. Their marriage lasted almost fifty years and was a classic early American partnership. Mother of his nine children and the daughter and heir of two the most substantial fortunes in the region, Alida also proved an unparalleled business associate.

By the early 1680s, Livingston had turned his attention to acquiring land - first on behalf of his widowed wife, and then on his own. Livingston's enthusiasm for pursuing his wife's Van Rensselaer inheritance was applauded by the Schuylers but reviled by the Van Rensselaers. By then, these Livingstons had taken up residence in the Van Rensselaer house across from Alida's family home. From that upper State Street headquarters, Robert Livingston directed his considerable energies to amassing one of the largest fortunes in seventeenth century New York while helping structure development in Albany and in the region.

In 1686, he joined with Pieter Schuyler to persuade Governor Thomas Dongan to grant Albany a municipal charter like that awarded to New York City a few months earlier. Livingston was the architect of the so-called Dongan Charter which established Albany as an early American city and ensured that its future would be different from that of the surrounding countryside. Carved out of land within the colony of Rensselaerswyck, the Van Rensselaers had yet another reason to dislike Livingston.

In the charter, Robert Livingston was appointed clerk of the city and county of Albany. The clerk registered legal documents and collected a fee for each transaction. That position gave Livingston a hand in many aspects of the development of huge Albany County. He held that office until 1721 when it passed to his son, Philip - an active deputy for many years. That office brought the Livingstons in close contact with its appointing authority - the royal governor. Over the years, Robert Livingston proved of great value to the royal government as an advisor, emmisary, and even financier. In return, he received land patents including one that created Livingston Manor in 1686, frequent and significant contracts, and a long-overdue appointment to the governor's Council in 1698.

Those connections to New York and ultimately to London enabled the astute and shrewd Livingston the wealthiest person in the upper Hudson region. But they did little to endear him to his Albany neighbors - who never really trusted the Scot and spoke out against him during his increasingly frequent absences. Although established in Albany where his Albany-born wife was raising their family, Robert Livingston's actual business went beyond the city stockade where trading in Anglo American networks kept him in New York and sent him to other cities and abroad more and more after 1690.

In the decade that followed, Livingston was closely involved in enabling the overseas mercantile interests of his oldest son John and son-in-law Samuel Vetch and wanted for a surrogate in Albany until second son Philip came of age in 1707. To fill this void, Robert Livingston had brought over his young nephew in 1687. However, Robert Livingston, Jr. proved more interested in furthering his own ends - particularly following his marriage to the daughter of Pieter Schuyler in 1697. Despite raising their large family without much active paternal support, Alida was quite adept at upholding the crucial Albany end of Livingston's trading empire until Philip was able to take over.

By that time, Robert Livingston was most frequently found in his substantial Manhattan townhouse where his trading ships were moored at his own dock. Then he was building his country estate below Albany on bank of the Roelof Jansen Kil. Although he continued to contribute large sums for Albany's defense and other essential projects, by the 1700s Robert Livingston was represented in Albany chiefly by Alida and her children.

During the years from 1690 to 1710, Livingston's careers represented major stories in the growth and development of the province of New York. However, little of it had a major Albany context as he was rarely at home on upper State Street. Livingston was first elected to the New York General Assembly in 1709 - but more to represent his manorial interests and the growing downriver part of Albany County than the city of Albany. He was elected speaker of the provincial Assembly and served until retirement in 1726.

As "Livingston Manor" became more habitable, Alida and Robert were reunited on the Roeloff Jansen Kil where Alida had come to rescue her deteoriating health. As the Manor filled out, however, its owners suffered as their health was not good. In 1716, Robert Livingston was called back from New York and spent six months at Alida's bedside. Over the next decade, the health of both partners deteoriated as their conditions were of great concern to their grown children. Alida Schuyler Livingston died in 1727. Robert Livingston died at the Manor two months short of his seventy-fourth birthday on October 1, 1728.

From a humble start as an Albany clerk, Robert Livingston established one of New York's premier political dynasties. Following their father's blueprint for success, his sons and grandsons took hold of leadership positions in business, government, and the law at the provincial, state, and national levels. Through marriage, his daughters and granddaughters connected the Livingstons to the most important families of New York and beyond.

notes

This handsome portrait, probably painted by Nehemiah Partridge about 1718, is now in a private collection. The image reproduced here was printed in Ruth Piwonka, A Portrait of Livingston Manor, 1686-1850 (Friends of Clermont, 1986). The definitive work on Robert "The Founder" is Lawrence H. Leder, Robert Livingston 1654-1728 and the Politics of Colonial New York (Chapel Hill, 1961). The most useable family genealogy is Florence Van Rensselaer's The Livingston Family in America and Its Scottish Origins (New York, 1949). See also, Cynthia A. Kierner, Traders and Gentlefolk:The Livingstons of New York, 1675-1790 (Ithaca, 1992). Also recommended is a major antiquarian history of the family by Edwin B. Livingston entitled The Livingstons of Livingston Manor (New York, 1910).

The intent of this biography of early Albany's most significant individual is to tell his story in an Albany context and to leave the larger (beyond Albany) life of Robert Livingston to his many biographers - beginning with those listed above.

Livingston's collection of the Albany Indian Records was edited and presented by Lawrence H. Leder as "The Livingston Indian Records, 1666-1723," in a special volume of Pennsylvania History 23:1 (January 1956). Secretary Livingston first signed the minutes in June 1677.

A somewhat overstated but still telling account of Alida Livingston as a businesswomen and her plight as a live-alone wife is found in Linda Biemer, "Business Letters of Alida Schuyler Livingston, 1680-1726," New York History 63:2 (April 1982), pp 183-207.

Livingston's holdings included two houses in Albany, pasture land outside the north gate, shares of the Saratoga Patent, and a tract of land on the Roelof Jansen Kil that became the basis for the Livingston Manor Patent - first granted in 1686.

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=88

Children

I. John, b. 26th April, 1680, Colonel; d. 19th February, 1720; m. (firstly) Mary WINTHROF, dau. of Fitz John WINTHROP, Governor of Connecticut, 1698-1707; m. (secondly) Elizabeth KNIGHT, dau. of a Mrs. Sarah KNIGHT. II. Margaret, b. 5th December, 1681; m. 20th December, 1700, Colonel VETCH, first English Governor of Annapolis Royal; d. June, 1758. III. Joanna Philippina, b. 1st February, 1684; d. 24th January, 1689-1690. [p.335] IV. PHILIP, b. 9th July, 1686, of whom later. V. Robert, b. 24th July, 1688, first Proprietor of Clermont; m. 11th November, 1717, Margaret HOWARDEN of New York; d. 27th June, 1775.

   Colonel John, born April 26, 1680, died February 19, 1720; married (first), at New London, April 1, 1701, Mary (died Jan. 8, 1713), only child of Fitz John Winthrop, governor of Connecticut. He married (second) October, 1713, Elizabeth, daughter of Mrs. Sarah Knight, who died March 17, 1735. No issue by either wife.

   Margaret, born December 5, 1681; married, December 20, 1700, Colonel Samuel Vetch, first English governor of Annapolis Royal. She died June, 1758.

   Johanna Philippina, born February 1, 1683-84, died January 24, 1689-90, died young

   Philip, of whom further.

   Robert, born July 24, 1688, died June 27, 1775. He was first proprietor of Clermont. 

He married, November 11, 1717, New York City, at the Reformed Dutch church, Margaret Howarden.

   Gilbert (or Hubertus), born March 3, 1689, died April 25, 1746; married, December 22, 1711, Cornelia Beekman.

   William, born March 17, 1692, died November 5, 1692.

   Johanna, born December 10, 1694; married Cornelius Gerrit Van Horne.

   Catherine, born May 22, 1698, died December 6, 1699. 

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Livingston-39