An American Aristocracy: The Livingstons
Author: Clare Brandt
A Livingston descendant once called the Hudson Valley, “Livingston Valley,” and with good reason. The original 1686 Royal patent of 160,000 acres on the east side of the Hudson River to Scottish merchant Robert Livingston grew within two generations to nearly one million acres and included vast portions of the Catskill Mountains as well. Intermarriages with other wealthy and influential Hudson Valley families—the Roosevelts, Delanos, Van Rensselaers, Schuylers, and Beekmans, to name a few—created a dynasty and a landed aristocracy on the banks of the new republic’s most important river—an irony embedded at the core of the “American experiment.” At one time forty Livingston mansions lined the east shore, and the family’s reach into NYS and American politics and economics was profound and enduring. An American Aristocracy tells the intimate story of this influential New York family from first settlement through the Revolution and the founding of the republic, through the commercial and manufacturing rise of New York State as "the Empire State," to decline in the 20th century and the break-up of the great estates
Paperback, 297 pages
Publisher: Black Dome Press