Robert R. Livingston (1746-1813), American jurist and diplomat, played a key role in negotiating the Louisiana Purchase.

Robert R. Livingston was born in New York City on Nov. 27, 1746, into a family of landed aristocracy. His great-grandfather, Robert Livingston, had married the widow of one of New York's great landowners. By 1746 the Livingstons were related to virtually all their fellow land barons and were, inevitably, deeply involved in the government of the colony. For decades before the American Revolution they had firmly opposed the politics of the royal governor and his colleagues. Livingston's father, a well-known jurist, was a foe of the Stamp Act, but he was also a nervous observer of the popular tumults marking the resistance to it.

Amid the rumblings of rebellion, Robert Livingston graduated from King's College (now Columbia) in 1765. He immediately entered a legal apprenticeship with his father's cousin, and later governor of New...