Category: Uncategorized
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Pierre-Etienne du Ponceau: The Indispensable and Long Lived Man
Pierre-Etienne du Ponceau or Peter Stephen du Ponceau after he anglicized it arrived in America at the age of 17 in the Company of the Baron von Steuben. Von Steuben had hired him, as a translator and aide-de-camp, in France. Some people have speculated that du Ponceau and von Steuben, a gay man, had…
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The Mysterious Muscoe Livingston: A Hunt Through History For A Man With a Fascinating Name
Muscoe Livingston, aka Musco and occasionally Muscow. This name has popped up in my research since 2018. He has proved to be elusive since then. Appearing in a document here and there but not in the Livingston genealogy. So, I finally decided to track this guy down and see who he…
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The Maple Sugar Bubble of the 1790\'s
Sugar Maple Tree Acer Sacharinum, The sugar maple tree. Every year, about this time, thousands of Sugar Maples are tapped so that the sap can be collected. Boiled it becomes syrup or even maple sugar. And there for a very brief time in the early 1790’s intersected abolitionists, land speculators…
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The Twisting Tale of the Hamilton-Livingston Family
Maturin Livingston Maturin Livingston (1769-1847) was the great-grandson of Robert (the nephew) Livingston who had come to New York to assist his uncle Robert Livingston, First Lord of Livingston Manor in his business dealings. Maturin was born in New York City and attended the College of New Jersey, later Princeton, in 1786. Soon…
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The Career of Henry Brockholst Livingston: Soldier, Lawyer, Judge
Henry Brockholst Livingston or Brockholst Livingston as he preferred to be called was born on November 25, 1757, the son of William Livingston, future governor of New Jersey, and his wife Susanna French Livingston. He was educated, eventually graduating from the College of New Jersey in 1774. One of his classmates was James…
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Losing the Duel
We have written here in the past about the successful duel that Brockholst Livingston fought over the size of his nose (Read all about it here) but not all the Livingstons had as much luck when they fought duels. First we have the case if William Alexander…
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Pointy End Toward The Bad Guy: Chancellor Livingston\'s Sword
The Chancellor\’s colichemarde from the collection of the New-York Historical Society Chancellor Robert R. Livingston was nothing if not a fashionable man. As such he frequently carried a sword. He was not a soldier, but the style of the time called for men of a certain position to carry a blade. One of the…
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I\'m Not Even Supposed To Be Here Today: Henry Beekman Livingston and the Battle of Rhode Island
Following the Battle of Monmouth Henry Beekman Livingston took a furlough and traveled to Rhode Island on personnel business. What that business was he never said but he must have known he would be heading into a potential battle zone, because Rhode Island is simply not that big.…
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Never Fear! The Holidays Aren’t Over Yet! Twelfth Night in the Colonies
Twelfth Night. A wildly funny Shakespeare play. The inspiration for the marathon song, “The Twelve Days of Christmas”. Perhaps an early version of Fortnite (okay, not that one but I wanted to appeal to a younger audience). Chances are you’ve heard the term but it’s possible you didn’t know A recent production of \”Twelfth…
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Tableau Vivant: From Parlor Game to The ‘Gram
In a typical year at Clermont, December would’ve seen us doing our traditional Tableau Vivant event. But, as we’ve heard so many times, 2020 is no typical year. So instead, let’s take a little look at where Tableau Vivant comes from. As may be apparent, the term “Tableau Vivant” is French. The words literally…
Clermont State Historic Site 