The Dark Side

There are two basic kinds of DNA test, one that looks specifically at the father's or the mother’s line, and one that considers all lines going back at least 5 generations. I have taken this second kind of test (as have various other members of the family) and -despite my purely European genome- it shows the existence of a relatively large number of fully-fledged African-American cousins, all on my Livingstone side. Of one of these, 23andMe says that we "likely share a pair of ancestors even more distant than your 5th-great-grandparents". The person in question wrote to me asking if I had any ancestors who were slave owners, since almost all of these relationships have at their basis liaisons between wealthy male slave owners and their sons and slave girls. I wrote her back saying that, although I have no such ancestors, it is quite possible that I have a great grand uncle, and cousins, who were slave owners. I refer to the New York Livingstons who descended from Rev, John Livingston by his son's James and Robert. Unlike his father, Robert Livingston was a man with a highly developed entrepreneurial spirit. One biographer refers to him as a 17th century Donald Trump. 

The first American Livingston—known as Robert the First or the first lord by his descendants, and who was Sarah Van Brugh Livingston Jay's great-grandfather—was born in Scotland of poor but genteel parents. His father, John Livingston, was a Presbyterian clergyman, a man of stern and uncompromising principles. When Charles II (who, it was rumored, had Papist sympathies) ascended to the throne of England in 1660, John Livingston refused to sign an oath of allegiance to the new king. As punishment, he and his family were ordered into permanent exile. The Livingstons fled to Rotterdam, where Robert Livingston spent his boyhood years... Tall, muscular, and rugged of countenance, as are many of his male descendants today, Robert Livingston was, essentially, an adventurer. In today's parlance, Robert would probably be called a hustler, a high roller, a social and entrepreneurial Alpinist, a seventeenth-century Donald Trump.

I was also contacted by another distant African-American DNA cousin, and I noted that he had ancestry in the former Livingston stomping ground of New Jersey (William Livingston was mayor of New Jersey). When I looked further into it using my uncle's and my mother's DNA, I found that there to be numbers of these African-American cousins on this Livingstone side. I also found a Jamaican cousin. This despite that fact that I am 100% European. Since there is no recent non-British ancestry on my non-Livingston side, I began to suspect that something was up...

Robert Livingston and his descendants were slave-owners, but they were also slave-traders: 

The wealth of the Livingston family dated back to the seventeenth century, when Robert Livingston married a wealthy widow, Alida Schuyler, and proceeded to acquire a grant of 160,000 acres of land near the village of Hudson from New York’s governor. Livingston invested heavily in the fur trade as well as mercantile voyages between Africa, the Caribbean, and North America involving sugar, tobacco, and slaves. After his death in 1728, his six children expanded the family’s landholdings (which at their peak reached one million acres) and its involvement in the slave trade. Five of his sons became merchants; one, Philip, sent three of his own sons to live in the West Indies for a time to manage the family’s affairs there. Philip Livingston became one of New York’s most active slave traders. He invested in at least fifteen slaving voyages, either alone or in partnership with one or two brothers or other merchants... Philip Livingston also advertised in the local press seeking the return of runaway slaves; for example, in 1752, a “Negro Man lately imported from Africa.... Cannot speak a word of English, or Dutch, or any other language but that of his native country.” Since the Livingston family displayed a remarkable lack of invention in naming its sons, with the same names recurring from generation to generation, it is sometimes difficult to tell which Livingston owned individual ships. But no fewer than seventeen voyages brought slaves into New York City between 1730 and 1763 on vessels owned in whole or part by members of the Livingston family.

And most importantly they were known to have affairs with their slaves. Robert's son, Philip Livingston, sent three of his sons to Jamaica “to manage affairs there”, and his grandson, Philip Philip Livingston, fled the colonies during the outbreak of the Revolutionary War and moved to Jamaica, where he was the owner and/or executor of several plantations. Large numbers of Africans were enslaved on these plantations. Hard-evidence that the Jamaican Livingstons had children with their slaves was uncovered by Christopher Rabb -now a prominent politician- who has a degree in African and Afro-American studies from Yale. He located a 1909 death certificate for his ancestor Christiana Williams Freeman, the daughter of a female slave named Barbara Williams. Philip Henry Livingston, the son of Philip Philip Livingston, was born in Jamaica, he brought Barbara Williams with him when moved to New York, and her daughter Christiana’s death certificate lists him as the father.