History Chat with Germantown Historian Tom Shannon: The Records of William Smith, Jr.

Join us for a History Chat with Tom Shannon, the town of Germantown historian, about the remarkable life of William Smith, Jr., and the invaluable record he left behind of the Revolutionary War on Livingston Manor.

William Smith, Jr. was a well-heeled and well-connected attorney in New York City prior to the Revolutionary War. Married into the extended Livingston family, after war and personal tragedy intruded, he and his family took up residence at Peter R. Livingston's just-built home, Hermitage, in 1776. Publicly neutral but privately skeptical of the cause of American independence, Smith had no political home during the war. An erudite gentleman, he kept extensive notes of his daily travels, interactions with neighbors ranging from Palatine tenants to Robert Livingston, Jr. and Chancellor Robert Livingston, and musings on the political and military maneuverings taking place in the Hudson Valley in 1777. Some of what he documented is…