Robert R. Livingston (1746–1813), statesman, diplomat, and agriculturist, was born in New York City and graduated from King’s College (now Columbia University) in 1765. He was admitted to the New York bar in 1770, served as recorder of New York City from 1773 until his revolutionary sympathies led to his removal in 1775, and represented New York in the Continental Congress, 1775–76, 1779–81, and 1784–85. Livingston served with TJ on the committee charged with drafting the Declaration of Independence but left for New York before the document was completed. He played a key role in drafting New York’s 1777 constitution and served as the state’s first chancellor, 1777–1801, in which capacity he administered the presidential oath to George Washington in 1789. As Congress’s first secretary of foreign affairs, 1781–83, Livingston directed the efforts of the American commissioners who negotiated the 1783 Treaty of Paris. In 1788 he made important contributions to New York’s ratification of the new federal constitution. Livingston refused TJ’s offer of the post of secretary of the navy in 1801 but accepted nomination the same year as minister plenipotentiary to France, serving until 1804 and successfully negotiating the Louisiana Purchase. His lifelong interest in experimental agriculture and mechanical inventions included service as the first president of New York’s Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Arts and Manufactures, 1791–1813, and first president of the American Academy of Fine Arts (later part of the National Academy of Design), 1801–02. Livingston was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1801. He did pioneering work on merino sheep husbandry and the use of gypsum as fertilizer and, in partnership with Robert Fulton, established a controversial steamboat monopoly on the Hudson and Mississippi rivers. Throughout TJ’s presidency the two leaders corresponded frequently on subjects ranging from politics to experimental science (ANB description begins John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography, 1999, 24 vols. description ends ; DAB description begins Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, 1928–36, 20 vols. description ends ; George Dangerfield, Chancellor Robert R. Livingston of New York, 1746–1813 [1960]; PTJ description begins Julian P. Boyd, Charles T. Cullen, John Catanzariti, Barbara B. Oberg, and others, eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 1950– , 31 vols. description ends , 6:202, 22:467, 30:653–7, 31:56–7; APS description begins American Philosophical Society description ends , Minutes, 16 Jan. 1801 [MS in PPAmP]; Washington Daily National Intelligencer, 9 Mar. 1813).

TJ began raising sheep of the tunisian breed, also known as barbary or broadtails, about 1806 (Lucia Stanton, Sheep for the President [2000], 3; Thornton to TJ, 30 Aug. 1809).