Kean University

Livingston-Kean Estate Livingston, Hamilton, and the American Revolution Governor William Livingston supervised the construction of Liberty Hall, initially a home that quickly became a key place in the shaping of United States Alexander Hamilton , a Founding Father and the first United States Secretary of the Treasury , resided at Liberty Hall with Livingston while attending academy in Elizabethtown The building of the estate on which Kean University is situated was begun in 1760, when lawyer William Livingston , who would become New Jersey 's first elected governor on August 31, 1776, and a Revolutionary War patriot and signer of the United States Constitution , bought 120 acres (0.49 km 2 ) in then- Connecticut Farms and Elizabethtown , across the Hudson River from his New York City home, in hopes of establishing a country residence. By 1772, extensive grounds, gardens, and orchards had been developed and a 14-room Georgian-style house had been built under the supervision of Livingston. In its first year of occupancy the new house, christened Liberty Hall, was the residence of both Livingston and Alexander Hamilton . In 1773, Livingston moved to the home with his wife, Susannah French of New Brunswick , and their children, full-time. Liberty Hall , the ancestral home of the Livingston and Kean families and an important center of Revolution-era American politics and culture, was built in 1760 by New Jersey's first governor , William Livingston . The mansion and grounds, on Kean's Liberty Hall Campus in Union, now serve as an American history museum and center for historic research Liberty Hall experienced damage from the Revolutionary War by both British and American forces, and the property featured prominently in the Revolutionary War's Battle of Connecticut Farms . [ 15 ] The property was restored and Livingston continued to maintain the gardens and grounds as governor until his 1790 death.

The estate passed to Livingston's son, future Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court Henry Brockholst Livingston . In 1798, the house was sold to George Richard Belasise, also known as Lord Bolingbroke, and his wife Isabella. The new owners established an English boxwood maze that still stands today and made extensive additions to the principal outbuildings of the property, established or improved a large hot house , and developed the gardens, introducing rare shrubs and trees to the grounds, and possibly laying out the grounds west of the mansion. [ 16 ] In 1811, the Kean family acquired the Livingston estate when Peter Kean purchased Liberty Hall in trust for his mother Susan Livingston Kean Niemcewicz (women not being eligible to own property in their own right at the time). Susan Livingston Kean, a niece of Governor Livingston, was the widow of John Kean , a Continental Congress delegate and advocate for the ratification of the Constitution in South Carolina who served as the first cashier of the Bank of the United States . Having died from a respiratory disease that developed as a result of being held prisoner of war at sea during the Revolution, Kean died at 39 and Susan Livingston Kean remarried to Count Julian Niemcewicz , a Polish nobleman who fled Poland after fighting unsuccessfully for Polish independence from Russia but returned in the wake of Napoleon 's successful campaigns. To honor her second husband Susan Kean changed the name of Liberty Hall to Ursino , the name of Niemcewicz's Polish estate. Peter Kean, the only son of Susan and John Kean, who married Sarah Sabina Morris, a granddaughter of Lewis Morris , the first royal governor of New Jersey , and served as colonel of the Fourth Regiment of New Jersey and an escort of Lafayette on his tour of New Jersey predeceased his mother. His son, John Kean II, inherited Liberty Hall.

John Kean II, who served on the staff of Governor Pennington with the rank of colonel, was an original stockholder of the Camden and Amboy Railroad, served as the first president of the Elizabeth and Somerville Railroad, as a vice president of the Central Railroad of New Jersey, as president of the National Bank of New Jersey, as president of the Elizabethtown Gaslight Company (later known as Elizabethtown Gas Company) and Elizabethtown Water Company lived at Liberty Hall for 60 years and made the most dramatically significant changes to the house and property in its history, transforming the house into a 50-room Victorian Italianate structure. Another John Kean , son of John Kean II and Lucinetta Halsted Kean ("Lucy Kean"), inherited the estate after their deaths. John Kean served in the United States House of Representatives from 1883 to 1885, and again from 1887 to 1889, and in the United States Senate from 1899 to 1911. Senator Kean lived at Liberty Hall when not in Washington, D.C., and held annual New Year's receptions for his political supporters at the estate. [ citation needed ] After the death of Senator John Kean the house passed to his nephew, Captain John Kean, a National Guard cavalryman and president of the National State Bank, the Elizabethtown Water Company, and the Elizabethtown Consolidated Gas Company. Captain John Kean was the son of Katharine Winthrop Kean and United States Senator Hamilton Fish Kean whose library was housed at Kean Hall, a building constructed for that specific purpose in 1912. A frequent political meeting place in the first years of its life, Kean Hall now houses the undergraduate admissions office and administrative offices including the Presidential Suite and the conference room for the Kean University Board of Trustees. [ 17 ] Captain John Kean's wife, Mary Alice Barney Kean , an historian and preservationist, was the last resident of Liberty Hall and was responsible for much of its preservation. [ 18 ]

Liberty Hall has had many distinguished visitors, including Martha Washington , who stayed at Liberty Hall during her husband's inauguration and President George Washington who visited his wife there not long after his swearing-in in New York City. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay was married to Governor Livingston's daughter, Sarah, at Liberty Hall. Other guests included Lewis Morris , Lafayette , Elias Boudinot , and several presidents after Washington, including Ulysses S. Grant , William Howard Taft , Herbert Hoover , Gerald Ford , George H. W. Bush , and Bill Clinton .