Clermont estate offers peek at family's past

Poughkeepsie Journal

Clermont • Located off Woods Road, 1 Clermont Ave., Clermont, N.Y. 12526. • Phone: (518) 537-4240 • Hours: Grounds open all year 8:30 a.m. to sunset. Mansion is open 11 a.m. - 5 p.m. House open Tuesday - Sunday, April 1-Oct. 31. Saturday & Sunday, Nov. 1-Dec. 15. Call for seasonal tours. Tours available for groups by reservation year-round. • Features: Garden tours, bird-watching walks, exhibit galleries, formal gardens, carriage trails and six miles of marked trails. Related story • Livingstons' mark is indelible

The Hudson Valley's historic mansions and surrounding grounds not only were designed by leaders in their fields ... architects such as Alexander Jackson Davis and such landscape designers as Frederick Law Olmsted ... these homes also were lived in and visited by some of the most famous names in American history, from Revolutionary War generals through the presidency of one of our nation's founding fathers.

The oldest of the riverfront estates in the mid-Hudson Valley is Clermont, in Germantown, home to generations of the Livingston family from 1730 to 1962. The family patriarch was Robert Livingston, who became wealthy through shipping and trade and married into the powerful Van Rensselaer family.

In 1686, Livingston became the first lord of Livingston Manor, an area encompassing 160,000 acres in Columbia County. His great-grandson, Robert R. Livingston, was chancellor of New York, the first secretary of foreign affairs, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a negotiator of the Lousiana Purchase and financial backer of Robert Fulton's steamboat.

French Marquis de Lafayette spent the night of Sept.16 at Clermont, the home of the Livingston family, where he was entertained by a magnificent ball.

And former President George Bush's bounteous family tree, well flowered with the rich and royal, has a few Hudson Valley branches. Research by the Friends of Clermont has disclosed that Bush is descended from Robert Livingston (1654-1728), first lord of the manor of Livingston. That connection means the president is a descendant of James Livingston, (1728-1790), of Poughkeepsie, a former Dutchess County sheriff and one of Robert Livingston's grandsons. He also is a distant cousin, somewhat removed, of the late U.S Rep. Hamilton Fish, R-Millbrook, who represented Putnam and parts of Dutchess, Westchester and Orange counties.

"We tend to think of President Bush as a Connecticut Yankee,'' said Bruce Naramore, manager of the Clermont Historic Site, one of the Livingston homesteads. "But he also has roots in the Hudson Valley. That was a surprise to many of us.''

James Livingston came to Poughkeepsie from Kingston and established the Dutchess County branch of the family. Besides being a Dutchess sheriff, he was a nephew of Henry Livingston, of Poughkeepsie, who some credit as the author of the famous poem, "Twas the Night Before Christmas,'' according to Naramore. Notes scrawled on a barn wall a century ago have now taken on historical significance at the Clermont State Historic Site

Those notes, listing the dates horses were shod on the estate, are a permanent part of the visitors' center .

Garden tours, bird-watching walks, exhibit galleries, formal gardens, carriage trails and six miles of marked trails are just some of the offerings at Clermont Historic Site, with grounds in both Dutchess and Columbia counties.

"One of the main things we try to do in the fall is get people out to explore the site grounds and visitor center'" said Naramore.

Picnic grounds are located on a bluff that overlooks the Hudson River.

"It's one of the best close-up views of the river and the Catskills,'' says Naramore.