...“admirably concise, thoroughly researched... The care with which the work has been done allows you to feel like a responsible adult while you’re savoring the family secrets.”

- Richard Slotkin, author of A Great Disorder: National Myth and the Battle for America 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 New York's Hudson River to 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 (Roosevelts, Delanos, Van Rensselaers, Schuylers, Astors, and Beekmans) 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, economics, and social scene was profound and enduring. Their influence was pervasive, with Livingstons on the Provincial Assembly, as members of the Continental Congress, on the committee to draft a Declaration of Independence, as first Chancellor of New York State and co-drafter with John Jay of the state Constitution, justice of the NYS Supreme Court, Minister to France... the list goes on.  And, of course, there was Robert Fulton's patron, who brought a revolution to commerce with the world's first commercial steamship.  This paperback book includes a Hudson Valley map showing Livingston family land holdings, and a family genealogy from 1654 to 1964.