Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Samuel Kettell, ed. Specimens of American Poetry. 1829.

By Critical and Biographical Notice

William Livingston (1723–1790)

WILLIAM LIVINGSTON, governor of New Jersey, was descended from a Scotch family which settled in New York. He was born in New York about the year 1723, and studied at Yale college, where he received a degree in 1741. He afterwards became a distinguished lawyer, and upon his removal to New Jersey, was chosen a member of the first Congress in 1774, having previously signalized himself by his public writings against the encroachments of Britain. In 1776 the inhabitants of New Jersey deposed their colonial governor, and formed a new constitution, under which Livingston was chosen first chief magistrate, and continued to be re-elected to the office till his death. He was a delegate in 1787 to the grand convention which formed the constitution of the United States. He died at his seat near Elizabethtown July 25th, 1790, aged 67.

Governor Livingston, besides his political writings, was the author of various essays upon miscellaneous topics: a poem entitled “Philosophic Solitude, or the choice of a Rural Life,” published in 1747, when he was about 24 years of age; and a few short poetical effusions of a subsequent date.