manded from the New York Legislature an investigation into the title by which the Livingstons held their famous Manor. Much of the petition is taken up with the recapitulation of the terms and limitations of the original grants which, it alleged, were for but 2600 acres, whereas the descendants of the said Robert Livingston claim under these letterspatent, 175,000 acres. About one third of the petitioners signed the instrument with their marks, instead of writing their names. At the foot of the document is the briefly significant note: On the 19 March, 1795, the committee of the Assembly reported adversely on the above petition, and the House concurred in the report on the 23d of the same month." Judge Sutherland prefaces his able "Deduction of Title to the Manor of Livingston," by a note to the, then, proprietor (in 1850) Mr. Herman Livingston, in which he gives the number of acres originally contained in the estate as 160,000. "All of which," he adds, "have been sold and conveyed in fee simple, but about 35,000 acres." This "deduction" was consequent upon a celebrated Manorial suit contesting the validity of the Livingston title, in which Judge Sutherland was counsel for the proprietors. A MS. note upon the fly-leaf of the pamphlet before me informs the reader that "John Van Buren's fee from the Anti-Renters was $2500, and $20 per day from the state during the trial." X OAK HILL ON THE LIVINGSTON MANOR THE (Concluded.) 'HE original Manor-House, built by the first Robert Livingston, was demolished over one hundred years ago. His The site is now occupied by the dwelling of Mr. Alexander Crafts, a grandson of Robert Tong Livingston. Not one stone of the old house is left upon another, but now and then the plough brings up a corroded coin, as if to mark the location of the primeval Bankinghouse established by the canny Scot. wealth, portioned among his descendants, was held and increased by them to an extent unusual in American families. Stately homesteads arose upon desirable points of the vast plantation, until nearly every commanding eminence for a dozen miles up and down the river was owned by one of the blood or name. Clermont, the home of Chancellor Robert Livingston at Tivoli, was, and is one of the finest and most interesting of these. It stands upon the lower division of the estate, and is a noble edifice, built in the form of an H, and gray with honorable old age. Paintings, furniture, and other heirlooms are preserved with pious care. Mr. Clermont Livingston, the present proprietor, is a grandson of Chancellor Livingston. The adjoining estate is owned by Mr. John Henry Livingston, a grandson of Herman Livingston (1) of Oak Hill. The last-named mansion-Oak Hill-was built by John Livingston in 1798, as the immediate successor of the heavy-raftered farmstead dignified by Royal Charter into a Baronial Hall. The modern Manor-House is about one and a half miles from the abandoned site. The omnipotence of affluence, conjoined with education and continued through four generations, wrought out in John Livingston a finer type of manhood than his well-born ancestor developed in the New World. A descendant thus describes the master of Oak Hill in his old age: |