Background
Robert Harpur was born on January 25, 1731 at Ballybay, Ireland. He was the only child of Andrew and Elizabeth Creighton Harpur, recent immigrants from Scotland who moved to Ireland in order to practice their Presbyterian faith.
Robert Harpur was born on January 25, 1731 at Ballybay, Ireland. He was the only child of Andrew and Elizabeth Creighton Harpur, recent immigrants from Scotland who moved to Ireland in order to practice their Presbyterian faith.
Harpur was sent to Glasgow University to complete his education. Fearing that he lacked the necessary gift of oratory, he abandoned the idea of entering the Christian ministry.
Fearing that he lacked the necessary gift of oratory, Robert Harpur abandoned the idea of entering the Christian ministry, taught for a few years in Ireland, then set out for America, arriving in New York September 1, 1761. Within three days after his arrival he was engaged as professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at King’s College in New York City at a salary, fixed later, of eighty pounds sterling per annum. The following year he was appointed the first librarian of the college. Though he resigned as professor in February 1767, he must have retained an official connection with the college, apparently as a tutor, for the disciplinary records of the institution show that during the next few years he was the object of frequent student outbreaks, inspired apparently by his severe discipline. He seems to have remained at the college until it was closed at the outbreak of the Revolution. When it was reopened as Columbia College in 1784, Harpur was secretary of the Regents of the University of the State of New York, which governed the institution. This position he filled until 1787. He resigned in 1795.
In the meantime Harpur had taken an active part in the politics of New York state. Unlike others on the King’s College faculty Harpur joined wholeheartedly in the rebellion. In 1776-1777 he was a member of the Third and Fourth provincial congresses. In the latter body, which made the first state constitution, he was more conspicuous as a member of various important executive committees concerned with revolutionary business than as an author of the fundamental law. Indeed his extremely democratic ideas, shown in his demand for a broad franchise and a radical jury system, then as later may have excluded him from posts of importance to which his abilities would have entitled him. After the completion of the constitution and the dissolution of the Provincial Congress he served on the Council of Safety which directed the affairs of the state before the organization of the new government and thereafter when the legislature was not in session. Appointed to a seat in the Assembly in 1777 he continued in that body until 1784.
During most of the war Harpur served as a commissioner for detecting and defeating conspiracies in Dutchess County. In the spring of 1781 he appears as clerk of the council of appointments. From 1778 to 1795 he was deputy secretary of state and in this capacity he served as secretary of the Land Board.
In 1795 at the age of sixty-four Harpur abandoned his political and educational activities and established himself in the backwoods of Broome County, New York. He had long been interested in the possibilities of the back country. Indeed two years after his arrival in America he had tried to establish a colony of Scotch-Irish farmers, trained in the linen and hemp industries, on a tract to the eastward of Lake George. Now he purchased from the state over thirty thousand acres on the Susquehanna River, founded the village of Harpursville, and devoted the last years of a long life to the sale and development of his lands.
Harpur was brought up under the severe discipline of puritanical Presbyterianism.
In 1776-1777 Harpur was a member of the Third and Fourth Provincial Congresses. In the latter body, which made the first state constitution, he was more conspicuous as a member of various important executive committees concerned with revolutionary business than as an author of the fundamental law. Indeed his extremely democratic ideas, shown in his demand for a broad franchise and a radical jury system, then as later may have excluded him from posts of importance to which his abilities would have entitled him. After the completion of the constitution and the dissolution of the Provincial Congress he served on the Council of Safety which directed the affairs of the state before the organization of the new government and thereafter when the legislature was not in session.
Harpur was twice married: first, on September 29, 1773, to Elizabeth Crygier; and in April 1789 to Myra Lackey. He left two sons and three daughters.