The History of Southwood
Southwood was part of the Livingston Estate. Robert Livingston, a Scotch gentleman from the Earls of Linlithgow family, came to America in 1672 and married a member of the Schuyler family, a Van Rensselaer widow. Living in Albany, he was secretary to the Commissioners of Indian Affairs for many years. From 1684 to 1715 he purchased land from Indians and secured by patent from the English Crown, large tracts of land in Columbia county, New York. The land was mostly wild and unprofitable but it would soon become the basis of great family wealth. In 1710 Hunter, the royal governor, gave him a patent for a tract of little more than one hundred and sixty two thousand acres, for which he paid into the King's treasury "an annual rent of twenty-eight shillings, lawful money of New York". This was less than a dollar a year. The freeholders who lived on the land were allowed a representative in the colonial legislature, chosen by themselves. In 1716 Robert Livingston, lord of the manor, by virtue of this privilege, took his seat as a legislator.

The lord of the manor gave, by his will, the lower portion of his estate to his son Robert, who built a manor house which he called Clermont. It was there that Robert R. Livingston was born. He would play a major role in American history, as an inventor and as a revolutionary.

Robert R. Livingston (B November 27, 1746 -- D February 26, 1813), was a delegate to the New York state constitutional convention and a member of the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration of Independence , although he was recalled by his state before he could sign the final version of the document.

His zeal in the Republican cause made him an arch rebel in the estimation of the British ministry. In the autumn of 1777 General Vaughan, at the head of the royal troops, went up the Hudson river on a marauding expedition to produce a diversion in favor of General Burgoyne, then environed by the American army at Saratoga. The British troops proceeded to Clermont where they burnt Livingston's new house and then retreated to New York. Robert Livingston built a new house on the ruins, also called Clermont.

Livingston served as Secretary of Foreign Affairs from 1781 to 1783, under the Articles of Confederation. In 1789, as Chancellor of the State of New York, he administered the first term oath of office to George Washington, the first President of the United States, at Federal Hall in the City of New York. Washington is the only President to have taken the oath of office in New York City, which was then the capital of the United States.

Livingston was a candidate for governor of New York in 1798. As U.S. Minister to France from 1801 to 1804, he negotiated the Louisiana Purchase. After the signing of the Louisiana Purchase agreement in 1803, Livingston made this famous statement:

"We have lived long but this is the noblest work of our whole lives...The United States takes rank this day among the first powers of the world."

After the adoption of the New York State Constitution in 1777, Livingston became the state's first Chancellor, the title given to the chief justice of the state's Chancery Court. At that time, it was the state's highest ranking judicial office. Under the title, he became universally known; it remained his nickname even after he left the office in 1802.

During his time as Minister to France, Livingston met Robert Fulton, with whom he developed the first viable steamboat, the Clermont, whose home port was at the Livingston family home of Clermont Manor in the town of Clermont, New York. Its first voyage left New York City, stopped briefly at Clermont Manor, and continued on to Albany up the Hudson River, completing in just under 60 hours a journey which had previously taken nearly a week by sloop.

Robert Livingston was one the the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Of the five figures standing in the center of John Trumbull's Declaration of Independence, Robert Livingston is depicted in the center of the committee of five presenting the draft Declaration to the Second Continental Congress. The five prominent figures depicted are, from left to right, John Adams, Roger Sherman, Livingston, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin.

Upon Robert Livingston's death, his daughter Elizabeth Stevens Livingston inherited Clermont manor. Her five children inherited portions of Clermont and built manor houses and farms. One of the children, Mary Clarkson, built houses for her sons on her portion of the Livingston estate, called Southwood and Midwood. Beatrice Perry purchased Southwood in 1969.

Ice boats on the Hudson.