LIVINGSTON, WILLIAm An American lawyer and patriot, Governor of New Jersey from 1776 to 1790. was born at Al bany. N. Y., the son of Philip. the second Lord of Livingston :Manor. Ile graduated at Yale in 1741, and studied law in New York City, where lie was admitted to practice in 1748, and where in a few years lie became one of the leading lawyers in the city. In 1760 he purchased a large estate at Elizabethtown, N. J., where he built a which he named 'Liberty Hall.' Ile was known as 'the Presbyterian lawyer,' and ardently opposed the institution of Episcopal dioceses in America in the Independent Reflector, a weekly paper which lie established in 1752. Ile was president of the 'Moot,' a famous law club in New York, and was a frequent contributor to the American Whig, and the author of numerous able pamphlets defending the rights of the Colo nies. In 1,12 he gave most of his law prac tice and retired to his New Jersey estate. With the exception of three terms in the New York Provincial Legislature as representative of his brother Philip's manor, he had no public of fice until his election to the Continental Con gress in 1774. At first much opposed to the idea
of separation from the mother country, he became convinced at last that that was the only possible course, and championed it with enthusiasm. Re was reelected to the Second and Third Congresses, and in June, 1776, was made commander-in-chief of the New Jersey militia. In August, 1776, he was elected Governor of New Jersey. and, re signing his military command, remained in office until his death. Throughout the war his services were of the greatest value to Washington and the American cause, and he ranks as one of the most efficient of the 'war Governors' of the Revo lution. Ile was a member of the convention which drew up the Constitution of 1787. and signed that document. With William Smith. clr., he prepared a Digest of the Lairs of Sean York, Consult Theodore Sedgwick, sir.• Life and Letters of William Livingston. (New York, 1833),