Robert Livingston the Elder (13 December 1654 – 1728) was a Scottish-born merchant and government official in the Province of New York. He was granted a patent to 160,000 acres (650 km2/ 250 sq mi) of land along the Hudson River, becoming the first lord of Livingston Manor.
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Early life
He was born in 1654 in the village of Ancrum, near Jedburgh, in the County of Roxburgh, Scotland. Robert was one of the seven children of Rev. John Livingston. He and his father were lineal descendants of William Livingston, 4th Lord Livingston, ancestor of the earls of Linlithgow and Callendar, via a grandson of William who was an early minister of the Church of Scotland.
In 1663, his father, John Livingston, was sent into exile due to his resistance to attempts to turn the Presbyterian national church into an Episcopalian institution. The exiled family settled in Rotterdam, in the Dutch Republic, where English merchants also worked. Robert became fluent in the Dutch language, which helped him greatly in his later career in New York and New Jersey, part of the former Dutch colony of New Netherland.