[3] Robert R. Livingston was born in August 1718 at Clermont Manor in what was then the Province of New York, a part of British America.

[5] His mother was the daughter of a wealthy English merchant in New York and granddaughter of Captain Isaac Bedlow, a Huguenot after whom Bedloe's Island is named.

He was a delegate to the Stamp Act Congress of 1765,[8] and, in 1775, a member of the Committee of One Hundred,[9] which briefly governed New York City.

[12] Their children included:[5] Livingston died on December 9, 1775, at his estate in Clermont, New York, several months after his own father's death on June 27, 1775.

[12] Through his son Major John R., he was the grandfather of Robert Montgomery Livingston (1790–1838), who married Sarah Barclay Bache in 1811.