Robert R. Livingston was born in August 1718 at Clermont Manor in what was then the Province of New York, a part of British America and baptized August 30, 1718. He was a younger son of Robert, first lord of Livingston Manor in New York; his mother, Margaret Howarden, was of English ancestry. In accordance with a custom common in New York families at that time, he was known as Robert R. , to distinguish him, as Robert son of Robert, from other Roberts in the family.
Livingston devoted all his life to the law and politics. In 1756 he was recommended to the Board of Trade by Governor Hardy to fill a vacancy in the Council, but was not appointed. From 1758 to 1768 he served as member of the Assembly from Dutchess County and in 1762 promoted a compromise whereby a loan was made to Parliament to pay bounties for volunteers requisitioned by Sir Jeffery Amherst. He was appointed judge of the Admiralty court in 1759 and in January 1763 was made puisne judge of the supreme court of the Colony. The acceptance at this time by Livingston and the other judges of commissions on tenure of the King's will marked the cessation of a bitter struggle over the independence of the judiciary. When in 1764 the question arose of the right to appeal from the courts to the governor and Council, Livingston, being one of the judges who refused to allow appeal, became one of the leading antagonists of Lieutenant-Governor Cadwallader Colden in his effort to establish that right, and Colden, in letters to the Lords of Trade and to the Earl of Halifax, sought his removal from the bench, but without success. Livingston was chairman of the New York committee of correspondence appointed to concert measures with the other colonies in opposition to the execution of the Stamp Act.
In 1768 he lost his seat in the Assembly. The following year, when his cousin Philip, elected from Livingston Manor, was refused admittance, Robert R. Livingston was chosen in his stead. The now conservative Assembly, however, anticipating his election, had passed a resolution that henceforth no judge should be allowed to take a seat. He was therefore rejected, but continued the struggle, and when he finally relinquished his claim in favor of Philip's nephew, Peter R. Livingston, who became a member in February 1774, he had been five times elected by the manor and as many times rejected by the Assembly. In April 1768 he had been named for the Council a second time, by Governor Moore, but his previous political activity made his appointment out of the question. In 1767 and again in 1773 he was one of the commissioners to settle the New York-Massachusetts boundary, which the Livingston lands adjoined.
Livingston had a career illustrative of many phases of the conditions and conflicts of pre-Revolutionary New York. He was one of the leading Whig in New York and one of the earliest promoters of the movement which culminated in the Stamp Act Congress. He was distinguished for his service as a member of the provincial assembly from 1759 to 1768. As a member of the New York committee of correspondence his most important service was the drafting of the address to the King.
While a member of the New York Provincial Assembly, Livingston proposed a series of resolves which embodied a plan of confederation providing a permanent congress to assign to each colony a quota to be raised for imperial purposes by each colony in its own way. Although these resolves were couched in mild language, they referred to the possibility that "the wish to retain" the Mother Country might be weakened. Ten years later, writing to his son in the Continental Congress, Livingston displayed similar views: he still opposed independence, favoring conciliation, yet recognized that conditions might in time require more aggressive tactics.
Livingston was a leader of the "Whig" interest: in imperial problems he was ready to go as far as necessary to assure the colonies' economic welfare; little influenced by the philosophy of revolution, he was opposed to going further merely for the sake of principle.
He was amiable, admired by a wide circle of personal friends and social in disposition.
On December 8, 1742, Livingston married Margaret Beekman, the only daughter of Colonel Henry Beekman of Rhinebeck and his wife, Janet Livingston, who was a daughter of Robert Livingston (nephew of the first lord) and of Margaretta Schuyler. His wife's rich inheritance, added to "Clermont, " made him one of the greatest landholders of the province. Of his four sons, two, Robert R. and Edward, took conspicuous part in public life, while four of his five daughters made notable marriages, bringing into the family connection General Richard Montgomery, Freeborn Garrettson, the Methodist preacher, Morgan Lewis, later governor of the state, and John Armstrong, 1758-1843, soldier, diplomat, and secretary of war.
