Clermont State Historic Site

The Livingston family and the Roosevelt family have been linked by business and marriage for centuries going back to the 1790’s when Chancellor Robert R. Livingston worked with Nicholas Roosevelt to invent a practical steamboat. The familial relationship to the Livingstons is even more fascinating though.

            Elliott Roosevelt (1860-1894), President Theodore Roosevelt’s younger brother, married Anna Rebecca Hall (1863-1892). Anna was the daughter of Mary Livingston Ludlow and Valentine Gill Hall Jr. Mary Ludlow Livingston was the daughter of Edward Hunter Ludlow and Elizabeth Livingston. She was the daughter of Edward Philip Livingston and Elizabeth Livingston, who were given Clermont by her father Chancellor Robert R. Livingston on the death of his mother, Margaret Beekman Livingston.

            Got that? Good.

            Elliott and Anna had three children. The oldest was Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962). She was more commonly called Eleanor. Eleanor’s mother Anna died in 1892 after contracting diphtheria. Her father, a renowned alcoholic, jumped out a window in Manhattan in 1894 in an attempt to commit suicide. He survived the fall but succumbed the next day.

            Eleanor grew up living with her grandmother, Mary Livingston Ludlow in Tivoli in her mansion Oak Lawn. She married Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1905. With both of her parents gone, she was given away by her uncle, Theodore Roosevelt. As an aside, Eleanor’s aunt Edith Roosevelt, by then Theodore’s widow, was against Franklin’s run for president mostly in protest of the many who were claiming that Franklin was Theodore’s son.

            Franklin and Eleanor had six children together. They stayed tied to the Livingston family legacy. When Honoria Livingston married Reginald “Rex” McVitty, one of Franklin and Eleanor’s granddaughters served as a flower girl.

            Furthermore, since the Livingstons and the Roosevelts were both part of the Hudson River gentry visiting each other was a necessity. In 1936, Sara Delano Livingston, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s mother paid a visit to Clermont, to visit Alice Livingston. Franklin was president of the United States at this time, so the visit carried even more social weight than a normal visit for Alice.  

            The Livingston family and the Roosevelt’s have been linked for years but it was in the 20^th century, in part because of the Livingstons, that the Oyster Bay and Hyde Park branches of the family were unified in the marriage of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.