James Livingston was an American Revolutionary soldier.
Background
James Livingston was born on March 27, 1747 probably in Montreal, Canada where his father, John Livingston, the grand-nephew of Robert Livingston, had settled soon after his marriage to Catryna Ten Broeck. At the outbreak of the American Revolution his parents returned to Saratoga County, New York.
Career
Livingston, with two of his brothers, joined the invading army of General Richard Montgomery, their kinsman by marriage. In 1775 Livingston raised and commanded a regiment of Canadian refugees. During the siege of St. John's, Quebec, he led 300 of his Canadians, supported by fifty Americans under Major John Brown, 1744-1780, against Fort Chambly, which he captured with eighty prisoners and important stores of munitions and foodstuffs. His possession of this fort materially reduced the strength of the defenses of St. John's, and his prisoners provided a useful threat of retaliation to any measure that the British might take against such prisoners as Ethan Allen and his comrades.
At the close of the unsuccessful siege of Quebec he found himself without a command, but, on January 8, 1776, the Continental Congress commissioned him colonel and shortly afterwards he was in command of an additional battalion of the New York line. He served under Benedict Arnold on the expedition to relieve Fort Stanwix and fought in both battles of Saratoga. In 1780, he was in command at Stony Point and Verplanck's Point when the Vulture brought André up the Hudson to arrange with Arnold for the betrayal of West Point. Suspicious of the circumstances, he fired on the British vessel, caused her to drop down the river instead of waiting for André, and thus prevented the safe return of André to the British lines.
When his regiment was reduced in 1781, he resigned from the army. Under the act of 1784 he became a member of the first board of regents of the University of the State of New York and continued to be a member after the reorganization of 1787. In 1786 and 1787 he was a member of the New York Assembly from Montgomery County, and he sat in that body again from 1789 to 1791. He died at Schuylerville in Saratoga County.
Achievements
Connections
Livingston married, probably about 1771, Elizabeth Simpson of Montreal. They had nine children; of these the first was Elizabeth, the mother of Gerrit Smith, and the sixth was Margaret, the wife of Daniel Cady and the mother of Elizabeth Cady Stanton.