of travel in Europe returned to New York, where he promoted various improvements in agriculture. He did much to introduce the use of gypsum as a fertilizer, and published an Essay on Sheep (1809). He was long interested in the problem of steam navigation; before he went to France he received from the state of New York a monopoly of steam navigation on the waters of the state and assisted in the experiments of his brother-in-law, John Stevens; in Paris he met Robert Fulton, and with him in 1802 made successful trials on the Seine of a paddle wheel steamboat; in 1803 Livingston (jointly with Robert Fulton) received a renewal of his monopoly in New York, and the first successful steam-vessel, which operated on the Hudson in 1807, was named after Livingston’s home, Clermont (N.Y.). He died at Clermont on the 26th of February 1813.
Livingston and George Clinton were chosen to represent New York state in Statuary Hall, in the Capitol, at Washington, D.C.; the statue of Livingston is by E. D. Palmer.
See Frederick de Peyster, Biographical Sketch of Robert R. Livingston (New York, 1876); Robert K. Morton, “Robert R. Livingston: Beginnings of American Diplomacy,” in The John P. Branch Historical Papers of Randolph-Macon College, i. 299–324, and ii. 34–46; and J. B. Moore, “Robert R. Livingston and the Louisiana Purchase,” in Columbia University Quarterly, v. 6 (1904), pp. 221-229.
LIVINGSTON, WILLIAM (1723–1790), American political leader, was born at Albany, New York, probably on the 30th of November 1723. He was the son of Philip Livingston (1686–1749), and grandson of Robert Livingston (1654–1725), who was born at Ancrum, Scotland, emigrated to America about 1673, and received grants (beginning in 1686) to “Livingston Manor” (a tract of land on the Hudson, comprising the greater part of what are now Dutchess and Columbia counties). This Robert Livingston, founder of the American family, became in 1675 secretary of the important Board of Indian Commissioners; he was a member of the New York Assembly in 1711–1715 and 1716–1727 and its speaker in 1718–1725, and in 1701 made the proposal that all the English colonies in America should be grouped for administrative purposes “into three distinct governments.”
William Livingston graduated at Yale College in 1741, studied law in the city of New York, and was admitted to the bar in 1748. He served in the New York legislature (1759–1760), but his political influence was long exerted chiefly through pamphlets and newspaper articles. The Livingston family then led the Dissenters, who later became Whigs, and the De Lancey family represented the Anglican Tory interests. Through the columns of the Independent Reflector, which he established in 1752, Livingston fought the attempt of the Anglican party to bring the projected King’s College (now Columbia University) under the control of the Church of England. After the suspension of the Reflector in 1753, he edited in the New York Mercury the “Watch Tower” section (1754–1755), which became the recognized organ of the Presbyterian faction. In opposition to the efforts of the Anglicans to procure the establishment of an American episcopate, he wrote an open Letter to the Right Reverend Father in God, John Lord, Bishop of Llandaff (1768), and edited and in large measure wrote the “American Whig” columns in the New York Gazette (1768–1769). In 1772 he removed to Elizabeth, New Jersey, where after 1773 he lived on his estate known as “Liberty Hall.” He represented New Jersey in the first and second Continental Congresses (1774,1775–1776), but left Philadelphia in June 1776, probably to avoid voting on the question of adopting the Declaration of Independence, which he regarded as inexpedient. He was chosen first governor of the state of New Jersey in 1776, and was regularly re-elected until his death in 1790. Loyal to American interests and devoted to General Washington, he was one of the most useful of the state executives during the War of Independence. While governor he was a frequent contributor to the New Jersey Gazette, and in this way he greatly aided the American cause during the war by his denunciation of the enemy and appeals to the patriotism of his countrymen. He was a delegate to the Federal Constitutional Convention of 1787, and supported the New Jersey small-state plan. In 1754 he joined with his brother, Philip Livingston, his brother-in-law, William Alexander (“Lord Stirling”) and others in founding what is now known as the Society Library of New York. With the help of William Smith (1728–1793), the New York historian, William Livingston prepared a digest of the laws of New York for the period 1691–1756, which was published in two volumes (1752 and 1762). He died at Elizabeth, New Jersey, on the 25th of July 1790.
See Theodore Sedgwick, Jr., Life of William Livingston (New York, 1833); and E. B. Livingston, The Livingstons of Livingston Manor (1910).
His brother, Peter van Brugh Livingston (1710–1792), was a prominent merchant and a Whig political leader in New York. He was one of the founders of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), was a member of the New York Council for some years before the War of Independence, a member and president of the First Provincial Congress of New York (1775), and a member of the Second Provincial Congress (1775–1776).
Another brother, Philip Livingston (1716–1778), was also prominent as a leader of the New York Whigs or Patriots. He was a member of the New York Assembly in 1759–1769, a delegate to the Stamp Act Congress of 1765, a member of the Continental Congress from 1774 until his death and as such a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and in 1777–1778 was a member of the first state senate.
William’s son, (Henry) Brockholst Livingston (1757–1823), was an officer in the American War of Independence, and was an able lawyer and judge. From 1807 until his death he was an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, and he wrote political pamphlets under the pen-name “Decius.”
LIVINGSTONE, DAVID (1813–1873), Scottish missionary and
explorer in Africa, was born on the 19th of March 1813, at the
village of Blantyre Works, in Lanarkshire, Scotland. David was
the second child of his parents, Neil Livingston (for so he spelled
his name, as did his son for many years) and Agnes Hunter.
His parents were typical examples of all that is best among the
humbler families of Scotland. At the age of ten years David
left the village school for the neighbouring cotton-mill, and by
strenuous efforts qualified himself at the age of twenty-three to
undertake a college curriculum. He attended for two sessions
the medical and the Greek classes in Anderson’s College, Glasgow,
and also a theological class. In September 1838 he went
up to London, and was accepted by the London Missionary
Society as a candidate. He took his medical degree in the
Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons in Glasgow in November
1840. Livingstone had set his heart on China, and it was a
great disappointment to him that the society finally decided
to send him to Africa. To an exterior in these early years somewhat
heavy and uncouth, he united a manner which, by universal
testimony, was irresistibly winning, with a fund of genuine but
simple humour and fun that would break out on the most unlikely
occasions, and in after years enabled him to overcome
difficulties and mellow refractory chiefs when all other methods
failed.
Livingstone sailed from England on the 8th of December 1840. From Algoa Bay he made direct for Kuruman, Bechuanaland, the mission station, 700 m. north, established by Robert Moffat twenty years before, and there he arrived on the 31st of July 1841. The next two years Livingstone spent in travelling about the country to the northwards, in search of a suitable outpost for settlement. During these two years he became convinced that the success of the white missionary in a field like Africa was not to be reckoned by the tale of doubtful conversions he could send home each year—that the proper work for such men was that of pioneering, opening up and starting new ground, leaving native agents to work it out in detail. The whole of his subsequent career was a development of this idea. He selected the valley of Mabotsa, on one of the sources of the Limpopo river, 200 m. north-east of Kuruman, as his first station. Shortly after his settlement here he was attacked by a lion which crushed his left arm. The arm was imperfectly set, and it was a source of trouble to him at times throughout his life,
