Family Portrait

Well it's the holiday season, and a whole lot of us will be taking advantage of family gatherings to get a family picture taken.  You know the ones I mean: Gramdma, Mom & Dad, Uncle So-and-So, and maybe even the family dog.

Although many American families of the later 18th and 19th centuries got group portraits painted (like the Angus Nickolson family, 1791 at right), I can't seem to find many of the Livingstons--just one from the 1820s.

So in honor of family gatherings during the holiday seaon, I thought I'd gather up as many of Margaret Beekman and Judge Robert R. Livingston's children as I could.  Ten of them survived to adulthood, and I found portraits of five of the remaining in my computer.  Voila:

From Left to Right, they are: Janet Livingston Montgomery, Catherine Livingston Garretson, Chancellor Robert R. Livingston, Alida Livingston Armstrong, John R. Livingston, and Edward Livingston.  At right are their parents Judge Robert R. Livingston and Margaret Beekman Livingston.

Kind of interesting to see even just this many in one place--reminds you what a big family they were.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Safe Refuge: the Livingstons' Home-Away-from-Home in 1777-78

A fellow Livingston historian and friend was all dressed up as Chancellor Livingston for our Halloween program when he began to wonder just where Margaret Beekman took her family when she fled the burning of the mansion in 1777.  We just had to know the answer...

On October 18, 1777, Livingston in-law William Smith recorded the following note:

...Rob R. L. & his Mother’s burnt...

Smith was tersely recording a pivotal and now-storied moment in Clermont's history: the infamous Burning of Clermont. 

The story of just how Margaret Beekman Livingston packed the wagons and fled with her children and slaves is the stuff of Clermont legend.  She rescued what she could and left the rest of her belongings to an uncertain future.  When she returned to find them in a pile of ash, she showed her endurance by rebuilding on the same foundation before the end of the war.

But even I have only ever given a little thought to what happened in between leaving Clermont and coming home.  What was the winter of 1777-1778 like for her?  Where did she stay?

Margaret fled to Salisbury, in the northwest corner of Connecticut in late of October of 1777.  It was a journey of about 30-35 miles and
probably took two days so she would have had to lodge her family and servants somewhere along the road.  A tavern?  A friend's house?  It has not been recorded.

source: Salisbury Historical Society

The house she was fleeing to was at that point owned by cousin Robert "the 3rd Lord" Livingston.  Robert appears to have only recently purchased it from its builder (a Mr. Swift).  The house was quite new, built in 1774, and it may have been purchased for his son Robert Cambridge Livingston, who eventually became its longtime resident.*  Nevertheless, that first fall it may still have been unoccupied.  The author of the 1900 book Colonial Ways and Days seems confused on this subject and suggests that "he [Robert the 3rd Lord] occupied it himself for short periods."  Perhaps in all the scuffle of Livingstons fleeing the Hudson Valley, he and his family fled there too?

A large and commodious house, its brick-and-stone hulk conformed to fashionable standards of the day, and it was located between two picturesque lakes.  Unfortunately for us, it was demolished in 1895 after lying derelict for many years, but the nostalgia of the Colonial Revival in the early 20th century lead to foggy recollections of its former glamor.  It seems to have been built basically along a Georgian floor plan with a center hall.  However, while one side was divided into the usual two front and back rooms, the other (the north side) appears to have been one long, wood-paneled room from front to back.  By 1900, this was romantically referred to as a "ball room," but it would likely have served other purposes as well (how many "balls" can one family throw in a year--enough to merit a whole room in the main part of their house?).  At any rate, such a large room may well have been closed off for the winter as it would have proven very difficult to heat with a single fireplace, especially with its large windows and high ceilings, as they are described.

A close-up of the demolition photo from 1895 shows the front parlor, which may also have been paneled along the lower portions, judging by the fact that the plaster stops there.  A large--and probably fine--mantle has also been removed from the building before its demolition, leaving behind the bare stone of the chimney.  All-in-all, this would likely have been a showy and pleasant room for Margaret's family.

The second floor seems, from pictures, to have been more modest.  Visible in the 1891 image at right, it was a clapboarded wooden story on top of the more imposing stone one, and it looks to have slightly lower ceilings and smaller windows that may have made these rooms easier to warm (the roofline in this image has been changed from the original, which was hipped or gambril, depending on the source you use.  The early engraving also shows a small dormer that enabled a large, fashionable Palladian window in the center hall.  This also didn't seem to survive into the 18th century).  The attic was apparently also a usable floor--if not for storage, than perhaps as bedrooms for slaves.  As shown below in the complete 1895 image, there were no fireplaces in the garret, and it would have depended on the radiant heat from the chimney to keep the temperature hovering around freezing. 

The 19th century engraving above also shows a lean-to-style extension on the back of the house as well as a small wing on the south side (wing also visible on the right side of the 1895 photo).  The lean-to on the back appears to be integrated well enough that I would not doubt its being original to the house, and it would not be out of context amongst its fellow New England structures.  Although a little out-of-date, these were often one long room from side to side and featured working areas for the house, such as the kitchen. There is a similar long room along the back of the More House at the Farmer's Museum in Cooperstown, NY.

I am less sure about whether or not the little south wing would have been present in 1777.  Its apparently wooden structure suggests that it may have been a later addition.

At any rate, Margaret Beekman Livingston, her three unmarried daughters, and an assortment of slaves would likely have found Montgomery House a comfortable and fashionable place to spend the winter.  Even if it wasn't home, even if they'd been uprooted and lost most of their belongings, at least they were ensconced in a place that befitted their station.

With the information we have left to us, many questions remain unanswered.  Was there any furniture there when Margaret and her family arrived or did she have to use the scanty furnishings she had rescued from her own house?  We know that she brought feather beds, which usually refers to just the mattress.  Were there bedsteads?  Did she set up her battered tall case clock in the hall?  Did the portraits of she and her recently-deceased husband get hung up to brighten the bare rooms?

Or was the place already being prepared for Robert the 3rd Lord's family and now stuffed with goods?  Were there other family members crammed in with them, refugees from the burning of the Hudson Valley?

Without more evidence, all this is left to the imagination.  Even so, just knowing that the house the family fled to was sufficiently grand and new helps illuminate that gloomy winter.  And yet another glorious old mansion left to decay and be torn down!  Bon soir Montgomery House.

*Geoff Benton suggests that the property may also have been purchased as a base of operations for supervising his mining interests in Salisbury.

Mere Mortals: Lifespans and the Livingstons

This all started when I heard someone say it:  "She died at 76, and that was old back then."  Oh no!  Another senseless generalization, growing ominously into an historic house myth. 

I know you've heard it said, "Life in the old days was nasty, brutish, and short," but as usual this generalization blurs the truth.  It sounds juicy and exciting so it gets repeated over and over.

Well for one, if you've read my blog before, you know my feelings about the phrases "back then" and "the old days."  These whitewash phrases ignore the change over time, suggesting that there was little difference between life in the 17th and 19th centuries of Colonial through Victorian life--even though it is a time period of three hundred years!  These phrases also oversimplify and generalize everyone's lives within one time period, regardless of region, financial status, and lifestyle. Finally, this myth also gets generalized to women with the idea that most of them died horribly in child birth, which will also be addressed briefly in this article.

Alright.  Let's examine this myth with the set of information that I have the best access too: the Livingston Family Genealogy.  With a dull thud, the heavy red book hit my desk yesterday, and I spent a couple hours flipping through with a pen and a calculator to get a good sampling of the first six generations of Livingstons and their lifespans.  Now mind you, this is the Livingston family (and a few spouses), a primarily New York-dwelling family of great wealth with birth dates ranging from 1654-1867 in total (although I did also subdivide within that time span).  The Livingstons were primarily city dwellers with second homes in rural areas that they traveled to in the summers.  These rural areas however were generally well-established settlements and not frontiers.

My sample's not totally complete within the Livingston group--whoever's family lines I could trace adequately to know what generation they fell in, and it yielded a good 193 people (along with about two dozen who's dates were unknown or incomplete).  Nevertheless, it's enough to give us a pretty good feeling for what lifespans were like for the Livingston family.  And here's the first breakdown for the whole 213 year span:

Age at death              # of People            % of total (rounded to nearest whole number)
1-2                              6                             3%
3-10                            9                             5%     
11-18                          5                             3%
19-30                         18                            9%
31-50                         32                            17%
51-70                         47                            24%
71-90                         61                            32%
90+                            6                               3%

Not too shabby.  A full of third of the Livingstons made it to their 71st birthday.  Discounting child mortality (during the particularly vulnerable years 18 and under), the numbers look like this:

19-30                     18                               11%
31-50                     32                               19%
51-70                     47                               28%              
71-90                     61                               36%
90+                         6                                  4%

A full 40% of adult Livingstons during this time period could expect to make it into their 70s and later.  Of course, that also means that more than half could expect to be killed earlier by accidents, wars (General Montgomery, at right, was killed in the Revolutionary War at 37), and assorted illnesses.  Even so it was not at all rare to live much later.  The Chancellor's brother John lived to 97 and so did their sister Catherine.  In fact, with the exception of one sister who died at age 5, all of the Chancellor's nine siblings made it past age 60.

So where did this idea come from that people of the 18th and 19th centuries were just dropping like flies?  Probably because death was very present in everyday life.  Life was uncertain, and as late as the Victorian era, even children were taught that death might strike at any time.

Many children encountered the loss of a parent or sibling when they were young.  For instance, four of Margaret Beekman Livingston's ten children were old enough to be aware of the death of their sister Catherine in 1752, and Walter Livingston's children eleven children were all under the age of 30 (the youngest was 11) when he passed away in 1797.  Children grew up knowing that death could strike at any time, at any age.  “Young as we are we may decay/ Our souls to live in endless day”  Particularly in the 18th century, American society reminded its members about the universality and imminence of death on a regular basis, even including dire warnings on headstones and mementos of the dead, such as that at left which includes "Remember to die" in the decorative border.

Actually, in doing these numbers, I was surprised to see that the Livingstons' child mortality rate seemed to be quite low.  Whether this is because their better resources and good luck meant higher survival rate or because poor records meant some losses were not preserved in history, I cannot be certain.  As I mentioned earlier, some Livingstons have no birth or death dates at all beside their names, and it stands to reason that some children lost in infancy may not have made it into our books.  Quite simply, some Livingstons were better researched than others.

Nevertheless, looking at the records I do have, I see that 15% of the known Livingston children in the first three generations did not make it past age 10, and most of those were lost before they turned 2 years old.  The risk of losing babies was simply a hard a fact of life.  Alida Livingston lost one infant to fever in 1692 and seven years later lost another toddler to unknown causes.  In later generations (the fourth through sixth generations, who were mostly having their children after the 1790s) things seemed to improve only a little for Livingston parents: 12% of their children still died before age 10.  Betsy Livingston (the Chancellor's daughter, seen at left) and her husband Edward Philip had the hardest go of it, losing 4 children before age 10 and then two teenagers on top of that. 

This then leads to the question of maternal mortality.  Without much in the way of birth control, women had children with much greater frequency than they do now.  For many of the Livingston women of the 18th century, childbearing could represent a period of up to 20-25 years of their lives, and many gave birth to 7-10 children (or sometimes more).  For many complex reasons, the birth rate dropped for wealthy families of the 19th century, but families with four or five children were will not uncommon.  Birth was fraught with challenges, and increasing its frequency in a single woman's life did increase the chances of life-threatening complications.  Nevertheless, in comparing the death dates I have for mothers with the birth dates of their children, I found that most long past their child bearing years, making it impossible for complications from child birth to have killed them.

I took a much larger (and more informal) sampling from the genealogy, skimming past hundreds of women for whom I could find the necessary dates.  I found only four women who died the same year that a child was born (one of the was John Henry Livingston's first wife Catherine Hammersley in 1873).  I stretched this a little further and guessed that if the child also died, it may not have been recorded at that time, and I still found only 6 women who died within 1-3 years of their previous child (one of these was Margaret Maria Livingston, the Chancellor's daughter).  Since causes of death were rarely recorded, it is impossible to show with great certainty, but amongst the Livingstons, childbirth does not appear to have proven fatal to a very great percentage of women.

This doesn't mean that birth wasn't frightening, painful, and full of risks.  Mary Stevens Livingston, the Chancellor's wife, suffered from a limp throughout her late life that may have come from complications with the birth of her second child.  Other non-Livingston women recorded their anxiety in letters and diaries as they approached the ordeal of birth.  But childbirth was by no means the leading cause of women's deaths during these periods.  Midwife Martha Ballard recorded great success during her decades of work in rural Maine in the late 18th century, apparently losing only one mother in delivery and another five during their lying-in period--this is out of nearly 1,000 births that she recorded.  Certainly that 1 in 198 mortality rate is higher than current 1st world standards, but it is not so high as it often gets made out to be.

I also found it interesting that I started out dividing this group of six generations into two halves.  But when I looked at them, the numbers of people who made it past their 51st birthday changed very little: 60%  in the first three generations and 57% in generations 4-6.  The numbers instead saw changes in the rates of people who died very young: children and mid-lifers.  Curiously, while a great percentage of children were lost in the first period (15% of total deaths), it was more frequent during the second period (encompassing the late 18th and early 19th centuries) to lose people during their prime years of 19 to 50 (28% of total deaths).  At this point, I don't have a good guess for the shift, but I'm not drawing any big conclusions because of the relatively small sample size.  (Montgomery Livingston at right was killed at age 39, most likely by tuberculosis)

From an early age, most people were aware of death on a particularly intimate level.  Most people experienced the death of a close family member early in life, and many were physically acquainted with the processes of death when the body was laid out in their very homes.  And in some ways this exposure developed a level of familiarity with the the process and events of death and grief.  For instance, in 1822 a New England teenager was comfortable enough to describe her grandfather's end as passing “sweetly into the arms of death, he expired without a groan or a struggle, or even the utterance of one word.”

Even so, the death of a young person was still conjured reactions of surprise.  The same teenager who described her grandfather's passing so gently later came to obsess about the difficulties of death, frequently writing about the passing of friends and neighbors with distress and sorrow.  One contemporary Schenectady resident wrote a poem describing the perceived "untimeliness" in the death of a young person:

There was an open grave, and many an eye

Looked down upon it.  Slow the sable hearse 

Moved on, as if reluctant to bear

The young, unwearied form to that cold couch. 

The Livingstons were certainly not immune to the specter of early death, and they lost many family members in the years that might now be considered "their prime."  Nevertheless, a full 69% of Livingstons lived well past their 51st birthday in the 18th and 19th centuries, and of those, most made it into their 70s and 80s.  

So life may have been fraught with perils that could have resulted in an early death, it didn't necessarily make you "old" in your 50s.  While some people were lost to "untimely deaths," older relatives in their 70s, 80s, and even 90s were served as reminders that life could be much longer.  Death was a universal prospect--and it still is--but life still went on in the mean time.

Imagining Arryl House: Piecing Together an Architectural Masterpiece

Over and over again, I get questions about "the ruin at the end of the parking lot."  Poor Arryl House!  Once it was the Chancellor's shining beacon of an American villa, perched above the the Hudson River where all could see.  Now it is a stabilized ruin--a curiosity nestled in the trees.  I have spent a lot of time trying to reconstruct it in my head, and it takes some doing to get a mental picture with any sort of detail.

The Chancellor built this house as his country estate after the American Revolution.  It was highly unusual, built in a H-shape, of which there are few comparables in the US from that time.  It's hard for people (including me) to imagine what it looked like inside, and because of this I was excited when I recently located a floor-plan of the mansion, which appears to show the house much later in the 19th century.

I only wish I knew the source of this image!  Nevertheless, I've decided on the date primarily because because the Chancellor's large orangerie was torn off the south side (at right) in the mid 19th century and replaced with a small "conservatory."  Even this seemingly-sparse picture can be a huge help in trying to piece together what it was like to actually walk through the mansion.

For one, there's the orangerie itself.  This was a spectacular feature of the house--something akin to a greenhouse--where the Chancellor grew citrus trees and other exotic plants.  Although I can't be sure, I've always guessed that this unusual picture below shows the house during the removal of that structure.  You can see curious damage to the stucco as though some sort of strapping has been removed.  It also appears that the shutters may have been closed over the window to protect them as the work was going on:

If that is so then you can see that the glassed-in structure was quite enormous, stretching almost the entire 75 foot width of the house.  You can also see that the structure had a second story--the "gallery" in which LaFayette was served a magnificent feast in 1824.  To recreate the orangerie in your mind, you also have to remember that glass was still being hand-blown, and that the common method for making window glass was called crown glass.  It limited the size of each pane to no bigger than the smooth part of the disc (the center was marred by a bullseye) that could be spun out flat, as seen at right.  The large stretches of the Chancellor's glassed-in walls would then have been constructed of small panes and criss-crossed with wooden slats like house windows of the same time period.  Nevertheless all that glass would have thoroughly impressed just anyone of the time period.

As I mentioned the orangerie was eventually torn off and smaller conservatory put in its place.  You can see the replacement at left in a picture from the late 19th century.  A large swath of earth has also been peeled away to allow light to enter three basement windows.  As far as I can tell from clicking through different angles of the house, that's the only place the basement got any natural light at all.

So what else can we learn from the floorplan?

For one, I can't help but note the centrally-located main staircase.  Leading up from the front door, it would have presented 18th century visitors with a familiar view: the grand front hall.  Upon entering the house, you would have been treated to a view straight through the house to the back courtyard and up a big staircase, much like at Clermont and other Georgian or Federal mansions.

What would have been more surprising to visitors however, would have been the broad gallery or receiving hall that stretched away to the right and left as you stepped in the front door.

It was 46 feet wide and 10 feet deep with huge west-facing windows that flanked the front door and would have glistened with afternoon sunlight.  The towering ceilings were approximately 13 feet tall, and the sense of space this all gave you must have been duly impressive.  Then of course you add in the large Gobelin tapestries that were said to line the walls in here.  This was all after coming in through an impressive courtyard and heavily-ornamented front door (seen below after years of neglect).  Quite simply, it's evident that the Chancellor wanted his guests floored when they entered his house.

Two of the house's wings served the major functions of a wealthy 18th century home.  In the words of a 1790s visitor, "One of its wings forms a dining room, another the drawing room," while a third might be thought of as a bit of an extravagance, "farther on a library."  I'd like to point out that all these rooms were huge--about the size of Clermont's library (seen at left).  They were about 21 X 25 feet, as large as many homes.  Dining and entertaining were central features of 18th century wealthy culture, and apparently the Chancellor took this seriously too.

Both front wings (listed in the 19th century floor plan as Dining Room and Library) include recessed cabinets to one side of the of the fireplace, likely with a door that created a symmetrical appearance.  Symmetry in architecture was valued as part of the reinterpretation of Palladian works of the Renaissance.  You can see a similar layout with two doors on either side of the fireplace in Thomas Jefferson's Monticello.

Of course, instead of plain paint on the walls, the Chancellor covered his walls with fancy French papers (according to a visitor's account), "the patterns being more beautiful, elegant, & lively, than what are manufactured in, & exported from England..."  We don't know what these French wallpapers looked like precisely, but they were most likely brightly-colored with curvy, floral-based designs.  The image at left is one that would not have been out of place.

To finish off the grandeur in these rooms, there is the matter of windows.  Five enormous windows adorn the walls of the front two wings.  To get a sense of how truly large they were, you have to look at the 1860s or 70s photo of John Henry Livingston standing in front of them (at right).  What you have to remember is that John Henry Livingston was 6 foot, 5 inches tall, and his head only barely reaches the height of the top sash.  Adding half-again that height would make these about 9 or 10 foot tall windows, and the light and views that they would let in would be simply gorgeous. 

As a triple-sashed window, the Livingstons would also have been able to open the bottom two sections and walk right out of them onto the piazza that surrounded the house.  You can see a similar use of windows again at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello (at left).

Most vernacular homes of the time boasted few windows, often 12 panes of glass such as our neighbor "The Stone Jug" at right.  The Chancellor's windows required 36 panes each! (The only draw-back to this being that the house was notoriously cold in the winter.  As someone who sits in a river-facing office through the wintertime, I can tell you that the wind just rips right through historic windows here!)

In 1797, visiting Polishman Niemcewicz mentioned that the Chancellor had a "room for billiards" in the central block of the house.  I can only imagine that this is the Billiards room depicted in the center of the house in our 19th century floorplan.  Billiards was not uncommon in the homes of the very wealthy by this time, but still you have to admit that it's a nice addition. 

I do wonder that Niemcewicz also mentions "downstairs three bedrooms for the family," which seem to have been carved up or eliminated by the 19th century.  Perhaps one of the wings on the back (by this time used for servants' areas and "own bedroom") was used for one or multiple bed chambers in the Chancellor's time.  There is also the question of the "paneled room" and "butler's panty" of the 19th century.  Could either of these have been bedrooms?  They do have fireplaces, which would have been a necessity.  The "spare room" has no fireplace, making it impossibly cold after October, and the adjoining bathroom is also a "modern" addition.  Considering that the "spare room" also contains the door which leads out to the Chancellor's formal gardens on the house's north side (shown at left), I wonder what the original use of this space was.

All in all, the more I looked at Arryl House while putting together this blog entry, the more I realized that it was a stellar and highly unusual piece of American architecture.  The rooms were almost palatial in scale, and the layout was uncommon enough to have made it a real treasure had it survived.  In fact, I tend to think that it would have rivaled some of the presidential mansions that tens of thousands of people flock to each year: Monticello, Mount Vernon, and Montpelier.  It just makes it all the sadder that it first declined so severely and then finally burned in 1909. 

I suppose I will never have a chance to see the house in it's full glory, but at least by gleaning what details I can from the various documentary sources, I begin to get a sense of what an architectural masterpiece the Chancellor's home really was.

The Livingstons in a Duel!?

So I was hastily whipping through one of my old favorite books Under Their Fig and Vine Tree, a travel journal written by Polish revolutionary Julian Ursyn Niemcevicz in the late 1790s.  And then I came across this passage:

'Did you know,' Mr. Law asked him [Washington], 'Mr. Jones, who was recently killed in a duel by Mr. Livingston?' 'I believe I have seen him, but I was never on intimate terms with him.' 'They say that the shot he fired at his opponent had grazed his nose.' 'How could he miss it,' replied the General. 'You know Livingston's nose; what a target!'

I honestly couldn't decide whether I was more tickled by the titillating notion of a Livingston in a pistol duel or the slight about the family's notorious aquiline nose. I forwarded it immediately to my friendly Livingston historian Geoff Benton and got back the following reference:

Duel # 1:

1798 - Unknown date

Brockholst Livingston versus James Jones

Livingston was a Republican and Jones a Federalist

According to Affairs of Honor by Joanne Freeman (page 172) -- When Republican Brockholst Livingston insulted Federalist James Jones, Jones responded by first caning Livingston and then trying to "wring his nose" -- so serious an affront that it prompted a discussion about precisely how much of Livingston's nose had been grabbed.

Jones was killed

Brockholst, eh?  Of course, I don't know much of anything about Brockholst except his unusual name.  In fact, a search through the Livingston Geneology gave me his full name as Henry Brockholst Livingston (b. 1757) who has a dashing portrait in A Portrait of Livingston Manor (shown at right).  Also there is a less dashing one (shown below at left).

And well it's true, he does have quite the nose.

A more complete version of the story was found in Duel with the Devil: The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America's First Sensational Murder Mystery.
  

According to Collins, the book's author, Brockholst had "always been known for an explosive sense of humor and an equally unpredictable temper."  He was a well-respected lawyer who'd been a wartime aide-de-campe to George Washington, who was also a close ally of Aaron Burr's.

When a editorial he wrote carelessly slighted a Federalist figure named James Jones, the other man assaulted him in front of his wife and children with a cane.  The final insult came when Jones grabbed Livingston by his prominent nose and yanked.

That was it!  A man's dignity can only take so much apparently, and he challenged Jones to a duel.  The other man was killed with a single shot to the groin, and Livingston was not prosecuted. 

The death haunted him for years however, and one acquaintance reported, "his best friends cannot lament his death more than Mr. Livingston does."

Eventually Livingston served on the Supreme Court of New York from 1802-1807 and from then on the US Supreme Court until 1823.  Apparently his career was unharmed by the incident, although assaults on his dignity appear to have been the penance that will follow him into history.