Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Liquid Gases" to "Logar" / Volume 16, Slice 7

by Various

LIVINGSTON, WILLIAM (1723-1790), American political leader, was born at Albany, New York, probably on the 30th of November 1723. He was the son of Philip Livingston (1686-1749), and grandson of Robert Livingston (1654-1725), who was born at Ancrum, Scotland, emigrated to America about 1673, and received grants (beginning in 1686) to “Livingston Manor” (a tract of land on the Hudson, comprising the greater part of what are now Dutchess and Columbia counties). This Robert Livingston, founder of the American family, became in 1675 secretary of the important Board of Indian Commissioners; he was a member of the New York Assembly in 1711-1715 and 1716-1727 and its speaker in 1718-1725, and in 1701 made the proposal that all the English colonies in America should be grouped for administrative purposes “into three distinct governments.”

William Livingston graduated at Yale College in 1741, studied law in the city of New York, and was admitted to the bar in 1748. He served in the New York legislature (1759-1760), but his political influence was long exerted chiefly through pamphlets and newspaper articles. The Livingston family then led the Dissenters, who later became Whigs, and the De Lancey family represented the Anglican Tory interests. Through the columns of the Independent Reflector, which he established in 1752, Livingston fought the attempt of the Anglican party to bring the projected King’s College (now Columbia University) under the control of the Church of England. After the suspension of the Reflector in 1753, he edited in the New York Mercury the “Watch Tower” section (1754-1755), which became the recognized organ of the Presbyterian faction. In opposition to the efforts of the Anglicans to procure the establishment of an American episcopate, he wrote an open Letter to the Right Reverend Father in God, John Lord, Bishop of Llandaff (1768), and edited and in large measure wrote the “American Whig” columns in the New York Gazette (1768-1769). In 1772 he removed to Elizabeth, New Jersey, where after 1773 he lived on his estate known as “Liberty Hall.” He represented New Jersey in the first and second Continental Congresses (1774,1775-1776), but left Philadelphia in June 1776, probably to avoid voting on the question of adopting the Declaration of Independence, which he regarded as inexpedient. He was chosen first governor of the state of New Jersey in 1776, and was regularly re-elected until his death in 1790. Loyal to American interests and devoted to General Washington, he was one of the most useful of the state executives during the War of Independence. While governor he was a frequent contributor to the New Jersey Gazette, and in this way he greatly aided the American cause during the war by his denunciation of the enemy and appeals to the patriotism of his countrymen. He was a delegate to the Federal Constitutional Convention of 1787, and supported the New Jersey small-state plan. In 1754 he joined with his brother, Philip Livingston, his brother-in-law, William Alexander (“Lord Stirling”) and others in founding what is now known as the Society Library of New York. With the help of William Smith (1728-1793), the New York historian, William Livingston prepared a digest of the laws of New York for the period 1691-1756, which was published in two volumes (1752 and 1762). He died at Elizabeth, New Jersey, on the 25th of July 1790.

See Theodore Sedgwick, Jr., Life of William Livingston (New York, 1833); and E. B. Livingston, The Livingstons of Livingston Manor (1910).

His brother, Peter van Brugh Livingston (1710-1792), was a prominent merchant and a Whig political leader in New York. He was one of the founders of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), was a member of the New York Council for some years before the War of Independence, a member and president of the First Provincial Congress of New York (1775), and a member of the Second Provincial Congress (1775-1776).

Another brother, Philip Livingston (1716-1778), was also prominent as a leader of the New York Whigs or Patriots. He was a member of the New York Assembly in 1759-1769, a delegate to the Stamp Act Congress of 1765, a member of the Continental Congress from 1774 until his death and as such a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and in 1777-1778 was a member of the first state senate.

William’s son, (Henry) Brockholst Livingston (1757-1823), was an officer in the American War of Independence, and was an able lawyer and judge. From 1807 until his death he was an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, and he wrote political pamphlets under the pen-name “Decius.”

LIVINGSTONE, DAVID (1813-1873), Scottish missionary and explorer in Africa, was born on the 19th of March 1813, at the village of Blantyre Works, in Lanarkshire, Scotland. David was the second child of his parents, Neil Livingston (for so he spelled his name, as did his son for many years) and Agnes Hunter. His parents were typical examples of all that is best among the humbler families of Scotland. At the age of ten years David left the village school for the neighbouring cotton-mill, and by strenuous efforts qualified himself at the age of twenty-three to undertake a college curriculum. He attended for two sessions the medical and the Greek classes in Anderson’s College, Glasgow, and also a theological class. In September 1838 he went up to London, and was accepted by the London Missionary Society as a candidate. He took his medical degree in the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons in Glasgow in November 1840. Livingstone had set his heart on China, and it was a great disappointment to him that the society finally decided to send him to Africa. To an exterior in these early years somewhat heavy and uncouth, he united a manner which, by universal testimony, was irresistibly winning, with a fund of genuine but simple humour and fun that would break out on the most unlikely occasions, and in after years enabled him to overcome difficulties and mellow refractory chiefs when all other methods failed.

Livingstone sailed from England on the 8th of December 1840. From Algoa Bay he made direct for Kuruman, Bechuanaland, the mission station, 700 m. north, established by Robert Moffat twenty years before, and there he arrived on the 31st of July 1841. The next two years Livingstone spent in travelling about the country to the northwards, in search of a suitable outpost for settlement. During these two years he became convinced that the success of the white missionary in a field like Africa was not to be reckoned by the tale of doubtful conversions he could send home each year—that the proper work for such men was that of pioneering, opening up and starting new ground, leaving native agents to work it out in detail. The whole of his subsequent career was a development of this idea. He selected the valley of Mabotsa, on one of the sources of the Limpopo river, 200 m. north-east of Kuruman, as his first station. Shortly after his settlement here he was attacked by a lion which crushed his left arm. The arm was imperfectly set, and it was a source of trouble to him at times throughout his life, and was the means of identifying his body after his death. To a house, mainly built by himself at Mabotsa, Livingstone in 1844 brought home his wife, Mary Moffat, the daughter of Moffat of Kuruman. Here he laboured till 1846, when he removed to Chonuane, 40 m. farther north, the chief place of the Bakwain or Bakwena tribe under Sechele. In 1847 he again removed to Kolobeng, about 40 m. westwards, the whole tribe following their missionary. With the aid and in the company of two English sportsmen, William C. Oswell and Mungo Murray, he was able to undertake a journey to Lake Ngami, which had never yet been seen by a white man. Crossing the Kalahari Desert, of which Livingstone gave the first detailed account, they reached the lake on the 1st of August 1849. In April next year he made an attempt to reach Sebituane, who lived 200 m. beyond the lake, this time in company with his wife and children, but again got no farther than the lake, as the children were seized with fever. A year later, April 1851, Livingstone, again accompanied by his family and Oswell, set out, this time with the intention of settling among the Makololo for a period. At last he succeeded, and reached the Chobe (Kwando), a southern tributary of the Zambezi, and in the end of June reached the Zambezi itself at the town of Sesheke. Leaving the Chobe on the 13th of August the party reached Cape Town in April 1852. Livingstone may now be said to have completed the first period of his career in Africa, the period in which the work of the missionary had the greatest prominence. Henceforth he appears more in the character of an explorer, but it must be remembered that he regarded himself to the last as a pioneer missionary, whose work was to open up the country to others.

Having seen his family off to England, Livingstone left Cape Town on the 8th of June 1852, and turning north again reached Linyante, the capital of the Makololo, on the Chobe, on the 23rd of May 1853, being cordially received by Sekeletu and his people. His first object was to seek for some healthy high land in which to plant a station. Ascending the Zambezi, he, however, found no place free from the tsetse fly, and therefore resolved to discover a route to the interior from either the west or east coast. To accompany Livingstone twenty-seven men were selected from the various tribes under Sekeletu, partly with a view to open up a trade route between their own country and the coast. The start was made from Linyante on the 11th of November 1853, and, by ascending the Liba, Lake Dilolo was reached on the 20th of February 1854. On the 4th of April the Kwango was crossed, and on the 31st of May the town of Loanda was entered, Livingstone, however, being all but dead from fever, semi-starvation and dysentery. From Loanda Livingstone sent his astronomical observations to Sir Thomas Maclear at the Cape, and an account of his journey to the Royal Geographical Society, which in May 1855 awarded him its patron’s medal. Loanda was left on the 20th of September 1854, but Livingstone lingered long about the Portuguese settlements. Making a slight détour to the north to Kabango, the party reached Lake Dilolo on the 13th of June 1855. Here Livingstone made a careful study of the hydrography of the country. He “now for the first time apprehended the true form of the river systems and the continent,” and the conclusions he came to have been essentially confirmed by subsequent observations. The return journey from Lake Dilolo was by the same route as that by which the party came, Linyante being reached in the beginning of September.