[1] James Beekman was born in 1732, the son of William Beekman (1684–1770) and Catharine De Lanoy (1691–1765), niece of Peter Delanoy, the first elected Mayor of New York City after British rule.

[3] His great-grandfather was Wilhelmus Beekman (1623–1707),[4] a Dutch immigrant who came to New Amsterdam from the Netherlands on the same vessel as Peter Stuyvesant.

This mansion served as the British military headquarters during the American Revolution, and was the site of the trial of Nathan Hale.

[10] Together, they had:[4] Beekman is known to have commissioned portraits of his children from the painter John Durand, and the entry for payment in his account book, dating to 1766, is the first record of the artist in New York.

Beekman had bought the coach in 1771 from Peter Burton, a London sea captain, for £138.