The Livingston Legacy
Three Centuries of American History
from the Symposium, June 6-7, 1986

Livingston Symposium:
Introduction

Bruce E. Naramore

Sung Bok Kim explains the academic community’s traditionally negative view of the Livingstons as a natural by-product of an anti-landlord bias imposed by successive generations of historians trained in Populist, Progressive, and Marxist ideologies. The size of the Livingstons’ tenant occupied landholdings were second only to the Van Rensselaers’ in colonial New York; it is little wonder, then, that the family would be viewed with suspicion. Kim further notes that the Livingstons were among the most literate of the colonial elite. They have left us--in comparison to their contemporaries--an enormous body of written materials. Therefore, relying upon what documentation is available, historians have understandably often focused upon the Livingstons as representatives of a traditionally unpopular class.

The Livingstons were a prolific clan, and historians undoubtedly have had ample opportunity to encounter individuals among the family who were base, avaricious, deceitful, and vain. It is equally undeniable, however, that the family has produced many capable individuals, beginning (despite his avarice) with the first proprietor of Livingston Manor, right down to the present generation.

Regrettably, the champions of the Livingstons and the way of life they represent have rarely matched in scholarship the family’s detractors. The pro-Livingston’’ body of historical scholarship, with a few notable exceptions, is burdened with fawning biographies and genealogical works compiled by Livingston descendants or their class sympathizers. Much of this work dates from the later 19th and early 20th centuries, a time in which--as dare Brandt points out in her recently published social history of the family--family members with declining fortunes often found refuge in the study and writing of the accomplishments of their more illustrious forebearers.

When a committee composed of members of the Friends of Clermont, staff at Clermont State Historic Site, and the Director of the Bard College Hudson Valley Studies Program first began discussing the idea of a symposium on Livingston Manor history in 1983 this traditional polarization of historical works relating to the family was foremost in our minds. It appeared that the work of Dr. Kim (in particular, Landlord and Tenant in Colonial New York Manorial Society 1664-1775) offered a starting point. Distilled to its essence, Dr. Kim’s thesis was that the experiences of the Livingstons and the other large landholders of colonial New York had to be viewed within the context of their time to be properly understood. Modern morals, mores, and ideals only tend to confuse one attempting to fully appreciate the society under which colonial America’s entrepreneurs operated. While Kim’s work has been viewed by some scholars as an unabashed defense of the Livingstons and their class, it stands forcefully as an appeal for historidal objectivity. With Dr. Kim’s work as a guidepost, the committee sent out an appeal to scholars working on subjects relating to Livingston Manor and the Livingstons for a reexamination of the issues in an unemotional manner.

A second objective of the symposium organizing committee was more straightforward: to encourage scholars to initiate or share new research into areas of historical inquiry that had previously. been neglected or treated only superficially. Because of the sheer size of the prolific Livingston clan, and their involvement in virtually all facets of New York society over a period of three centuries, the possibilities were unlimited. At this point, it might be worth digressing to relate, very briefly, the essence of the Livingston story.

The founder of the Livingston family in America was Robert Livingston (1654-1728), a talented and ambitious Scotsman raised in the Netherlands, where his father, a leader of the Scottish Kirk, had taken the family into exile after a clash with England’s King Charles II in 1663. Livingston came to America after his father’s death. He arrived in Albany at the age of twenty after a brief stay in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, determined to make his fortune in the lucrative fur trade. Albany was a good choice for young Livingston; fluent in both English and Dutch, and with a good knowledge of international trade acquired in Rotterdam, Livingston brought with him skills that were much prized in the former Dutch colony of New Netherland. He soon established himself in the fur trade and ingratiated himself with both the old Dutch families and their new English masters. Political appointments followed: clerk of the Albany General Court, tax collector, and secretary to the colony’s Board of Indian Commissioners. He also secured appointment as clerk to the colony’s greatest private landholding, Rensselaerswyck.

In 1679 Robert Livingston staged perhaps his greatest coup when he married the widow of his former employer on the Patroonship of Rensselaerswyck, Alida Schuyler Van Rensselaer. His entry into the aristocracy of colonial New York was assured, and so was that of his heirs with the acquisition of the Manor of Livingston, granted by Royal Governor Thomas Dongan on July 22, 1686.

The Manor of Livingston, 160,000 acres on the east side of the Hudson River 40 miles below Albany, established the economic and political base that served the family’s interests well into the 19th century. Under Robert’s son Philip (second Lord of Livingston Manor), the agricultural basis of the manor economy was supplemented by the establishment of New York’s first iron works. The second and third generations of Livingstons also continued to add to their landholdings, acquiring vast tracts of wheat growing and timber lands in Dutchess County, in the Catskill Mountains, and in northern and western New York.

With the onset of the American Revolution, the Livingston family found itself at a crossroads. Conventional wisdom might have dictated that this landed aristocracy, created by the British Crown to serve England’s imperial interests, might have felt most comfortable among the ranks of the Loyalists. Such was not the case. Despite qualms about the Republican--and democratic--sentiments espoused by many Patriots, most members of the Livingston clan cast their fate with an independent United States. The Livingston family was well represented in the Continental Congress, in the Provincial Congress, in the Continental Army and state militia, and, later, in state and federal government.

The democratic yearnings that propelled many to embrace the Revolution, and which gradually became an American ideal, also carried the seeds of destruction of the world that had nurtured the Livingston family since the Manor’s creation. Dissent among the residents of New York’s great private landholdings--some tenant farmers, others squatters from New England--had arisen as early as the 1750s. During the early years of the Revolution some Livingston Manor residents took up arms in defense of the Crown, hoping that a grateful King George would grant them title to their farms after the Livingstons and their fellow rebels were defeated. Most Livingston tenants, however, took a stance of wary neutrality during the Revolution, unconvinced that either side had their interests at heart. Anti-landlord agitation erupted again after the Revolution, now fueled by a seemingly endless influx of New England farmers, intent on establishing freeholds, into the State of New York. In the 1790s, and again in the 1810s, violence flared up on Livingston Manor, only to settle down into an uneasy truce as the anti-renters unsuccessfully pressed their case in court that the Livingston’s title to their land was faulty. The lingering bitterness between New York’s great landholders and those who desired to own their own small plots of land finally culminated in the colorful and occasionally violent uprising of Smith Boughton and his Calico Indians in the 1840s.

It was not the Calico Indians, however, who brought about the dissolution of Livingston Manor, but courts of law, the court of public opinion and, in the final analysis, the Livingstons themselves. The manor’s political power was eroded with the adoption of the New York State Constitution in 1777, which deprived the Livingstons of their guaranteed seat in the Assembly. Robert Livingston (1708-1790), the third manor proprietor, had determined as early as 1770 to break the entail on the manor. Upon his death in 1790 Livingston Manor was divided between his four younger sons and the children of his improvident eldest son, Peter R. Livingston. As the lands were divided by their heirs, the Livingston’s political and economic power was further eroded.

Although their love of the land never diminished, the Livingston heirs’ need to possess it did. The new American society of the Jacksonian Era offered opportunities to the more ambitious among them in New York City or in the developing western frontier. The more pragmatic of those who remained behind found their burdens lessened by bowing to the inevitable and settling for smaller tracts of land, while they harvested a reasonable return on the sale of manor lands to their former tenants. In truth, some members of this prolific family clung desperately to both their concept of aristocracy and their landholdings long after it was practical or fashionable to do so. Nevertheless, the Livingstons, in comparison to most of their fellow landed aristocrats, accepted the new social and economic order with relative ease.

The papers presented during the June symposium addressed a wide range of issues that touched the lives of manor residents between the founding of Livingston Manor in 1686 and the demise of the lease tenure system that supported the first five generations of the Livingston family. The committee, and those attending the symposium, were very pleased with the variety and quality of scholarship found in the work presented. As we had hoped during the planning stage, old issues and assumptions were reexamined, and much new ground was turned. It was also no surprise that, while objective examination of historical data was strongly adhered to, interpretation of that data varied among the symposium speakers.

Many issues, of course, could not be addressed within the confines of a two day conference. Some avenues for future research were suggested during an informal session with several of the academic historians participating in the symposium; a transcription of that discussion has been included in this volume. If this compilation, and the Livingston Manor Tercentenary activities sponsored by the Friends of Clermont and Clermont State Historic Site during 1986, serves to stimulate further scholarly work along the lines suggested, the objectives of the symposium organizing committee can be said to have been fully realized.

A final word needs to be said about the organizations and individuals who planned and supported the symposium and this publication. Funding for the planning of the conference was provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities through the Friends of Clermont and from the Bard Center/Hudson Valley Studies Program. Inkind support for the planning and implementation of the program was made available by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, Taconic Region. The organizing committee was most fortunate to receive from the beginning the full cooperation and expertise of Dr. Richard Wiles, Director of the Hudson Valley Studies Program, who served as co-chairman of the committee. Dr. William P. McDermott provided additional experience and sound advice on the planning of the symposium and preparation of this volume. Other commitee members whose contributions deserve notice include Clare Brandt, Janet Graham, Dr. Sung Bok Kim, Andrea Zimmerman, Ruth Piwonka, and Joan Jones. Finally, the committee is grateful to Bard College for recognizing the contributions made by the scholars who participated in the symposium to the study of regional, state, and American history by agreeing to publish the papers presented at the symposium, in their unabridged form, in this volume.