Clermont in Germantown is where Robert R. Livingston administered Washington's oath, negotiated the Louisiana Purchase, and bankrolled Fulton's steamboat.
The Livingston family held this bluff above the Hudson for more than two centuries, and their most famous resident, Chancellor Robert R. Livingston, did about as much as one person can do in early American history from this base: he sat on the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration of Independence, administered George Washington's oath of office in 1789, negotiated the Louisiana Purchase as Minister to France, and bankrolled Robert Fulton's steamboat experiments. The British burned the original 1740s house, and two dozen other Livingston buildings, in 1777 in retaliation for the family's role in the Revolution; Robert's mother, Margaret Beekman Livingston, rebuilt it between 1779 and 1782, and it's her house, updated in the Federal style by later generations, that stands today.
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