AN AMERICAN ARISTOCRACY

The Livingstons

By Clare Brandt

Paper, 6″ x 9″, 314 pages, map & family genealogy

ISBN 9781883789770  $17.95

A Livingston descendant once called the Hudson Valley, “Livingston Valley,” and with good reason. The original 1686 Royal patent of 160,000 acres on the east side of the Hudson River to Scottish merchant Robert Livingston grew within two generations to nearly one million acres and included vast portions of the Catskill Mountains as well. Intermarriages with other wealthy and influential Hudson Valley families—the Roosevelts, Delanos, Van Rensselaers, Schuylers, and Beekmans, to name a few—created a dynasty and a landed aristocracy on the banks of the new republic’s most important river—an irony embedded at the core of the “American experiment.” At one time forty Livingston mansions lined the east shore, and the family’s reach into NYS and American politics and economics was profound and enduring. An American Aristocracy tells the intimate story of this influential New York family from first settlement through the Revolution and the founding of the republic, through the commercial and manufacturing rise of New York State as "the Empire State," to decline in the 20th century and the break-up of the great estates.

A vivid chronicle of a great American family whose members prove to have been every bit as entertaining—and almost as important—as they thought they were. Geoffrey C. Ward, author of Closest Companion and former editor of American Heritage magazine

Beautifully shows that only through irony can one relate to time. … A detached humor and precise detail permit Clare Brandt to present all the sweep and irony of this American comedy. Carlos Fuentes, author of Terra Nostra and The Old Gringo