Pirates and Prostitution: The Livingston Family

I began this website in an effort to understand and chronicle the history of our local movie theater, The Goetz, in Monroe, WI. In doing so, I learned about the theater’s founder, Leon Goetz, and his connection to another Monroe film magnate, John R. Freuler. (Leon ran an earlier theater founded by Freuler’s Mutual Film employees, the Gruwells.)

Freuler is big news in the world of Early Film: his firm, Mutual Film Corp., spearheaded the challenge to the Edison Trust by ‘independent’ film men. Freuler also championed the wider film industry’s collaboration with the federal government, which began in the immediate aftermath of WWI.

The independents for whom Freuler was an industry spokesman were infamous for their pornography production: they had a world-wide reputation for smut and were looked down upon everywhere. While the Edison Trust also produced pornography as a “loss leader” for the sex trade, the independents’ roots were deeply embedded in the “White Slave Trade”— international organized prostitution. The same global networks which trafficked in women/children also trafficked in early film porn.

When Freuler was in business, organized prostitution was controlled by a global crime syndicate that was based in the Austro-Hungarian territory of Galicia and controlled by Jewish mafia networks. These mafioso had state sponsorship in many places, but had become the right-hand of the decrepit Hapsburg dynasty. However, Jewish-Galician control of the sex trade in the USA was not always the case: prior to the immigration of Eastern European Jews, our wealthy Quaker minority played an outsized roll in prostitution, which you can read about here.

Bohemia and Galicia play an important role in this post; they were both territories in Austria-Hungary during the 18th and 19th centuries. Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria were under the Ottoman yoke for most of this time period: this has implications for hermetically-inspired child grooming which I wrote about with respect to Lucie Duff Gordon. British investor-partners of the Hapsburgs in their trafficking networks included Lucie’s future in-laws, the Glynn family. Hapsburg-Rothschild-Sapieha rail networks brought children and women out of Hungary, Bohemia, Galicia, often via Trieste or Cernowitz, to sex-slavery the world over.

One of Freuler’s principal investors in Mutual Film was a scion of a prominent American family: Crawford Livingston Jr. Crawford got in on the ground floor of Mutual with Otto Kahn, whose firm made war loans to the Hapsburgs for WWI, and a trio of brothers who were venereal disease specialists, the Doctors Shallenberger. (It’s likely they were also involved in organized prostitution.) This was not the Livingstons’ first rodeo, however.

From their early days on the North American continent, the Livingston family were a prominent sex-trade family. In a nutshell, they were landlords to brothel-operators from at least as early as the 1810s. Crawford descended from the family of New York State Chancellor Robert R. Livingston [pictured in post title image], who reluctantly joined the American side of the Revolution in 1776. Chancellor Robert was one of many Livingstons who profited from New England’s sex trade in the aftermath of the unrest.

Beyond his business ventures, modern readers will be interested in Chancellor Robert’s politics: he was a black-slave-owner who disliked black slavery but profited from the sexual enslavement of white women and was inimical to the interests of the majority of white voters (from whom he drew his labor force). From The Gotham Center for New York City History’s “Robert Livingston Papers” page:

But Livingston’s attitudes toward race and slavery were complex. When he served on New York’s Council of Revision, he helped veto legislation that provided for the gradual abolition of slavery but prohibited Blacks from holding public office and voting. Of emancipated slaves, Livingston wrote they could not “be deprived of those essential rights without shocking the principle of equal liberty,” adding, “Rendering power permanent and hereditary in the hands of persons who deduce their origins from white ancestors only” would establish a “malignant … aristocracy.” Despite this somewhat enlightened statement, Livingston used enslaved labor at Clermont. In his September 1796 will he stipulated that all slaves over thirty years old would be freed and those who were younger could be freed under certain circumstances. By 1810 he owned at least five slaves. In addition, the Chancellor owned several brothels in lower Manhattan, which made [sic] have been homes for Black servants, or prostitutes.

[American citizens who could count themselves among the “malignant…aristocracy” would have accounted for over 95% of the population in subsequent generations. White slave-holders (there were black ones too!) would have counted for less than 1% of the population.]

In my experience, most people from cultures outside the Anglophone world are confused by American elites seemingly contradictory and anti-white view of their own history. These elites are perceived to hold ‘other’ white people to a very different moral standard to that which they hold 1) themselves and 2) various other ‘minority’ groups. Particularly in Asia, I’ve heard American elites criticized for “only seeing good, never bad” among Africans and American Blacks in particular. Readers may wish to consider these criticisms with a sympathetic ear in light of the Livingston history I’m rehashing today. Suffice it to say, race-politics and ‘equality’ of the Livingston stripe have always had a strange synergy with the sex trade, i.e. white-slavers. In Monore, WI’s history we see the same synergy between abolitionists and “whiskey hotel” operators, such as our likely arch-madame, Almira Humes and her Universalist/Bonelatta crew. Abolitionism (1830s onward) found support in NYC’s sex-trade underground also. From Gilfoyle’s City of Eros:

On occasion, outrageous exhibitions by black prostitutes even stimulated social unrest and political turmoil. With the ascendancy of the antislavery movement after 1830, leading abolitionists and defenders of black civil rights were accused of advocating “racial amalgamation,” a contributing factor to riots in the 1830s… Sexuality was thus politicized in antebellum New York. Over time, intercourse between black and white heterosexuals was less a private matter of personal choice and more an issue of public intervention. Anxiety over economic competition from blacks induced some whites to play on fears of interracial sex in order to attack the civil rights goals of the antislavery movement.”

Abolitionism freed black labor in the South and made them available to Northern employers who wished to depress wages in their own states. Historically, wherever free black labor settled in Northern territories, prostitution flourished— take for instance, Waterloo, IA.

In light of these political realities, one might not be surprised to hear that “scholars have infrequently consulted and worked with [Chancellor Robert R.] Livingston’s manuscripts for almost all aspects of his life.” I believe this infrequency has not only impoverished our understanding of the American Revolution, but also impoverished our understanding of 1) the “special relationship” with Britain that developed after the tragedy of our Civil War (1860-65) and 2) the development of the film industry. This time frame was also the period in which the groundwork for the international financial community we know today was laid.

Robert R.’s race-politics with respect to Africa-derived citizens and slaves were not the Livingstons’ only foray into race-politics. In fact, his great-grandfather’s (Robert the Elder’s) relationship with the warring Five (later Six) Nations Tribes was far more important for re-establishing his family’s relationship with the Restored British Crown.

The Livingstons were not in the New World by desire, but because of a decline in the family fortunes beginning with the English Civil War. As the Livingstons slid down the social hierarchy following Cromwell’s ouster of the Stuart dynasty, some turned to religion and embraced Radical Protestant ideology which alienated them from power-networks in Scotland [Presbyterianism]. Robert the Elder’s father was forced to flee to Rotterdam.

The Netherlands’ port cities at this time were hotbeds of 1) piracy and 2) Kabbalah and Hermeticism-inspired Radical Protestant thinkers who held an important place for American Indians in their wacky cosmology. Leaving Rotterdam for the New World as a teen, Robert the Elder would pursue land- and sea-piracy and initiate the Livingston clan’s climb back to prominence. The particulars of Robert the Elder’s undertakings foreshadow the peculiarities of modern American politics.

Firstly, Sea-Piracy: Robert Livingston the Elder, great-grandfather of the aforementioned Chancellor Robert R. Livingston, was a business partner of the notorious pirate William Kidd. Both Livingston and Kidd enjoyed patronage from their contemporary Lords of Trade and Lords of the Treasury in London: these pirate-entrepreneurs were a politically connected crew in the imperial city.

A fellow Scotsman, Robert “the Elder” Livingston entrusted William Kidd (pictured) with a ‘black-ops’-like engagement preying upon other pirates hired by Livingston’s political adversaries in New York City. Robert the Elder was descended from a radical protestant preacher who was driven out of Scotland.

Not only was Robert the Elder an ally of Captain Kidd, but he collaborated with a number of Irish and English noblemen in a bid to dominate privateering (piracy) in North American waters [from The Livingstons of Livingston Manor by Edwin Brockholst Livingston]:

Among the courtiers at St. James's was an Irish nobleman [Bellomont] who took a great deal of interest in New York affairs, and knew some thing about them, having been a member of the Parliamentary Committee appointed to inquire into the petition of Leisler's family for the reversal of the attainder. This gentleman was Richard Coote, Earl of Bellomont and Baron of Coloony, and treasurer to Queen Mary . He had many conversations with Livingston on colonial matters, and the subject of the best method for suppressing the curse of piracy was naturally the one most discussed. The king could spare no man - of-war, and Parliament would grant no supplies for this purpose , so the only alternative was to try and suppress it by private enterprise.

Bellomont actually interested the king himself in the project, who expressed his willingness at one time to invest the sum of £3000 in the adventure. Some of the leading Whig politicians, including Somers, the Lord Chancellor; Admiral Russell, Earl of Orford, the victor of La Hogue; and the Duke of Shrewsbury , one of the Secretaries of State, were also willing to provide funds for such a laudable, as well as what was hoped to be lucrative undertaking…

Bellomont not knowing of a suitable person to command the privateer, Livingston introduced to him the Captain William Kidd already mentioned as having borne witness to Governor Fletcher's misgovernment in New York [political enemy of Livingston], and spoke highly as to his respectability and fitness for the post. This merchant captain is first mentioned in New York annals during the Leislerian troubles, when this “ blasphemous privateer , " as he has been called by a recent American writer, brought his vessel up to the town to assist Ingoldsby in his attack on the fort, for which service he afterwards obtained a grant of £ 150 from the New York Assembly. He was considered to be a man of fair means, and had a wife and child residing in New York [under Livingston control], so that it is not surprising Livingston should have recommended Kidd as a responsible person , and one to be trusted in such a command…

Accordingly , in the month of October, 1695 , Livingston drew up with his own hand the Articles of Agreement, by which Lord Bellomont on the one side, on behalf of himself and fellow -subscribers, and Livingston and Captain Kidd on the other , settled the conditions on which the Adventure Galley, as the vessel was to be called , afterwards to become so notorious in the annals of piracy, was to be fitted out.

This little business deal ended well for neither Kidd nor the British, but Robert the Elder came out fine and it is from his fortune that subsequent Livingston land ownership derived. Readers may like to know that the “Red Sea Men”, like Captain Thomas Tew, who Kidd was commissioned to ‘out-pirate’, were the allies of Livingston’s political adversary in New York City, one Colonel Fletcher. At this time piracy was simply another tool in colonial politicians’ political arsenal.

Thomas Tew, a pirate originally from Rhode Island who preyed on his American neighbors and then Red Sea East Indian shipping by way of Bermuda in the late 1600s— all fine by the British, as they didn’t control that trade at that time.

The type of Christian only a Quaker could love…Captain Tew, as celebrated by Allen & Ginter cigarettes in 1890. Allen & Ginter became one of the four cigarette companies which formed American Tobacco, controlled by the Duke and Ryan “Tammany Hall” family. American Tobacco would cannibalize the Edison Trust assets after Teddy Roosevelt broke them up, disabling his political adversaries in mass media. American Tobacco was also targeted by Teddy, but clever maneuvering by Benjamin B. Hampton would save them— and their special relationship with London during WWI.

Secondly, Land-Piracy and American Indians: Mystically-inspired Radical Protestants of the 1600s were preoccupied with being the ‘New Jews’— i.e. having a special relationship with God which marked them out from their European peers and made them righteous. In order for their interpretations of Old Testament (Jewish) religious writings to hold water, there can be no people outside of ancient Jewish concepts of the origin of humanity. Therefore, North American Indians had to be one of the lost Tribes of Israel in order for these radicals’ grandiose perceptions of themselves to be true. Readers interested in this self-serving quasi-deification of American Indians might like to read Dan Vogel’s Indian Origins of the Book of Mormon for background to this wider Radical Protestant world-view.

Having left Rotterdam as a teen, Robert the Elder spent at least a year living with the Indians of the proto-New York State region and acted as a gatekeeper between them and 1) New York’s administrators, 2) Quaker Pennsylvania’s administrators, and 3) Virginia’s administrators. Robert the Elder was the British side’s point-man for combating Canadian/French use of the Indians as land-pirates, much as Robert the Elder used Captain Kidd for political ends on the seas. By the late 1690s Robert the Elder was drawing in over GBP 100 a year as “Secretary for Indian Affairs” to the New York colony.

Banditry had a special place in the culture of most American Indian tribes: rather than seen as economically-regressive lawlessness, banditry was perceived as a way of demonstrating power and enriching tribal leaders through slave-taking and looting. Banditry was the other side to the coin of American-Indian prowess regarding trade routes, scouting and other economically useful (for British and Quakers) activity.

Business Ties that were Never Broken: “Penn's Treaty with the Indians”, c. 1840/1844 by Edward Hicks, courtesy of the US National Gallery of Art. Five years after this treaty was made, Robert the Elder Livingston would make his mark as an intermediary between Virginian and New York power-brokers and the Indian Tribes which preyed on poorer settlers (the unchosen) under their dominion.

Therefore, native land-pirates were a valuable asset in not only the wars between great European powers in North America, but also controlling colonists who might not share interests with London nor William Penn. This is why Robert the Elder wanted to make himself indispensable for controlling North American land-piracy as well as sea-piracy. Genealogist E. B. Livingston provides detail on the Indian situation [Livingstons of Livingston Manor]:

At a meeting of the Albany Common Council held on the 14th of September, 1686, Livingston's salary was advanced five pounds, raising it to the sum of twenty pounds per annum, “ in consideration of the diverse services " which he performed as clerk. In 1693, one of his appointments, that of collector, was worth fifty pounds per annum, while that of secretary for Indian Affairs subsequently brought him in a further hundred. This last salary, however, was only granted to him in 1695 , he having performed the duties of that office for the long period of twenty years without any remuneration whatever. Mr. Livingston's official duties at Albany brought him into frequent communication with the Indians, and the knowledge he thus obtained was of great assistance in after years to the various colonial governors. The exposed position of Albany as a frontier town, and its close proximity to the hunting grounds of that powerful Indian confederation — the Iroquois or the Five Nations which at this period was composed of the tribes of the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas, and was later on to become known as the Six Nations on the addition of the Tuscaroras, required that all Indian questions should be treated with the greatest care, as the French governors of Canada were always actively intriguing to gain these fierce warriors over to their side. In consequence of the mutual jealousies of the French and English colonists aggravated by the bigotry of opposing religions — constant outbreaks of the Indians had to be continually guarded against, while at the same time every inducement was held out to them, by the English governors of the colonies exposed to their destructive raids, to prevail on these savages to "bury the hatchet," and to keep "the Covenant chain" unbroken .

Robert the Elder was particularly involved with the question of Indian banditry into Quaker-controlled territory.

Sir Edmund Andros, the first governor of New York after its final cession to England, as well as his successor Colonel Dongan, devoted much of their time to the study of this Indian question; and in the summer of 1684 , during the rule of the latter, Lord Howard of Effingham, Governor of Virginia, came to New York for the purpose of personally conferring with Dongan on this all-important subject. These two royal governors proceeded to Albany, where they met in the city hall a deputation from the leading sachems of the Five Nations , and a long speech delivered by Dongan, on the danger of permitting the French to build forts in their territory, or to send priests to their villages, and on the advantages to be gained from an alliance with the English colonies, was listened to with great attention and respect by the assembled Indians; and their orators in reply agreed to accept the protection of the Duke of York, and to put a stop to the raids into Virginia, which had been the cause of Lord Howard’s journey to Albany. During this conference Livingston was of great assistance in rendering into English the Dutch interpreter’s translation of the Indian speeches; and four years later he was of still greater service to Dongan, who being out of funds had to apply to Livingston for pecuniary aid in carrying on the war against the French. This was the cause, ultimately, of the latter’s first visit to England, in 1695; owning to the sums of money advanced by him on this occasion, and for the subsistence of the militia during the subsequent civil commotions, being left unpaid, he was compelled to cross the Atlantic and seek redress in London. [And start his piracy monopoly.]

Raiding Five Tribes Indians from the New York territory would have crossed the Quaker Pennsylvania territory to prey on Virginian settlers.

Quakers were tolerant of Indian raiding as long as it targeted non-Quakers— particularly if such raids happened against Scot-Irish Presbyterian settlers, who were at best fitful subjects to the Quakers’ imperial patron in London. A particularly bloody instance of this double-standard and partiality to their Indian business-partners resulted in the “Paxton Boys” movement and their confrontation of Quaker bigotry. Naturally, the Quakers responded with a flurry of racist pamphlets, however the Paxtons had delivered the opening shot which initiated the end of Quakers’ suzerainty in Pennsylvania. Readers can probably guess the biases with which modern scholarship presents the “Paxton Boys”.

Robert the Elder’s piracy fortune was the seed-money which later Livingstons used to become prominent landlords in 1770s New York City. (The age of British Occupation and the “Jackson Whites”/”Jackson Blacks”.) However, Chancellor Robert R. Livingston was not the only arch-pimp in the Livingston family. His brother, John R. Livingston, was one of the leading pimp-landlords in Five Points, the area of NYC most associated with prostitution, immigrant overcrowding, and specifically inter-racial commercial sex. (Five Points was the main location in Scorsese’s 2002 film portraying fictional gang violence, Gangs of New York.) Besides being a sex-trade don, John R. was a war-time pirate and British partisan:

One historian of the Livingston family has concluded that John saw the Revolution as a prime opportunity for personal profit. He considered conducting business trips to Great Britain and Holland during the hostilities, only to be dissuaded by his more patriot brother… Those bits of advice, however, did not discourage him from privateering, because of “the big money in it”. As early as 1776, Livingston embarked on secret trade and illegal commerce with England or its allies. For John Livingston, patriotism and loyalty took a backseat to individual profit. “Poverty,” he admitted, “is a curse I can’t bear…[W]ith it a man had better not exist.”

As one might expect, John R. Livingston’s whorehouses were at the nexus of the inter-racial tensions brewing in NYC. Much like in the Quaker stronghold of Barbados, these brothels were often run by black women or men and ‘staffed’ with white women sold into or groomed into prostitution from a painfully young age. (Typically 14 years though often much younger.) Gilfoyle records contemporaries’ observations of throngs of black laborers crowding around these establishments.

Allegedly a portrait of John R. Livingston from Columbia University’s Historical Justice Initiative webpage on “Wallach Hall”, formerly “Livingston Hall”. The Livingstons donated a tremendous amount of resources to the university, which has removed their name from the institution because the Livingstons participated in African slave markets. Columbia has kept the properties, however.

These brothels followed a well-established New World pattern. Earlier Barbadian brothels were often crammed with the wives or daughters of Irish prisoners of war: sold into slavery by Cromwell’s partisans or his successors’ and lorded over by “mulatto” madams with local political favor. These women/children became factories supplying bodies for the regional sex trade via organized breeding programs overseen by the madams— those with a strong stomach can read about that in O’Callighan’s To Hell or Barbados.

In John R. Livingston’s NYC, the situation was little better [Gilfoyle]:

Increasingly [leading into the 1820s], large numbers of young girls, some only ten to twelve years of age, resorted to prostitution to sustain themselves and their families… There emerged informal familial and female networks [grooming networks] in which adults and prostitutes encouraged female family members, friends, and acquaintances to prostitute themselves.

Livingston was well placed to profit from this industrial-scale grooming of largely white, immigrant, girl-children:

Behind these scenes of public carnality stood the landlord. The most prolific entrepreneur of Five Points vice came from one of the leading early American families. John R. Livingston, from the famed clan of Claremont, was the brother of Chancellor Robert R. Livingston, one of the nation’s “founding fathers”… To the Livingston’s already significant landholdings in Manhattan, John Livingston added more shortly after the war [i.e. on the profits of privateering for the British], and in 1788 he gained control of property in what later became Five Points. By 1791, Livingston had purchased and leased property just west of Broadway, an area later filled with houses of prostitution. After 1800, Livingston steadily purchased property, some of it from family members, in the area around the Collect Pond, on Orange and Anthony streets… As Five Points emerged as an entrepot of sex, Livingston profited from prostitution, and throughout the 1820s and 1830s [when inter-racial conflicts became heated] he bought and sold land in the heart of the neighborhood. By 1828, Livingston had come to control at least five brothels on Anthony Street near Paradise square.

… Livingston’s control of this property, as well as of other habitats of prostitutes, was substantiated in the annual tax assessment records of the municipality. From 1820 to 1850, Livingston was listed as the owner/occupant of more than thirty documented houses of prostitution…

Five Points was not the only place where John R. Livingston controlled bordellos, he was active spreading prostitution into other residential areas, but Five Points was the most politically explosive neighborhood. No matter how wide-spread and organized citizen opposition to Livingston’s metastasizing pimp-network was, judges and politicians always found in his favor. Other early-film-biz families who invested in the sex trade alongside Livingston at this time were the Lorillards, who first got airing on this website alongside Benjamin B. Hampton’s American Tobacco patrons, the Tammany Hall Ryans. (Tammany Hall and its corruption was largely created on the back of sex-trade money.) The Livingstons, Lorillards and later Ryans were emblematic of political problems which racked, and continue to rack the American body politic.

In keeping with his family’s history, race-politics marked out John R. Livingston’s “Five Points” red-light-district from NYC’s other vice pockets. From Gilfoyle:

Indeed, from the end of the Revolution to the 1830s, black New Yorkers enjoyed a wider range of freedom than ever…The vehement racism that appeared after 1830 was less developed or overt. This tolerance probably affected even leisure-time and sexual behavior in the city. For example, as early as 1801, the saloonkeeper Solomon Bell entertained black and white men in his establishment. By midcentury, the best-known dance hall in Five Points, Dickens Place, was operated by Pete Williams, a successful black saloonkeeper.

For much of the antebellum period, in fact, black-run establishments in Five Points were popular and attracted much attention. While houses of black prostitutes… did business strictly with African-American customers, numerous Five Points saloons and brothels accommodated black and white prostitutes and a similarly mixed clientele. In the 1820s, the black madam Hannah Lewis employed only white women in her Anthony Street brothel… Haunts like the Diving Bell, Swimming Bath, and Arcade on Orange Street, as well as the Yankee Kitchen, and Squeeze Gut Alley nearby, were well known for promoting miscegenational sexual intercourse.

For black pimps who were willing to work with Livingston and his ilk, the rewards were tremendous:

Some African-American proprietors assumed leading roles in the underground economy of five points. Many managed, George Foster claimed, “to become house-keepers and landlords, and in one way or another scrape together a good deal of money. They associate upon at least equal terms with the men and women of the parish, and many of them are regarded as desirable companions and lovers by the ‘girls’.” Many black proprietors had white wives or mistresses, which frequently caused further consternation. To Foster, “their influence in the community [was] commanding”.

These open, commercial displays of interracial prostitution did not pass without some controversy. White residents in Five Points occasionally singled out the rowdy or immoral behavior of their black neighbors.

Naturally, Five Points residents’ criticisms of the White Slave Trade would have cut into not only black saloonkeepers’ profits, but those of John R. Livingston, too. Add into the mix Irish immigrant laborers’ growing impulse to organize to protect their own interests and the situation for families like the Livingstons became explosive.

With a crown of stars: Winston Churchill’s mother, Jennie Jerome, was the daughter of a prominent stock-jobber who insisted he shot into crowds of Irish protestors with a gatling gun from the top of the New York Times building during the 1863 Draft Riots. The Jeromes claim they have Iroquois ancestry. Ironically, Jennie’s sister Leonie would marry into the prominent Irish “Leslie” family.

But from where did these Livingston attitudes come? Was it simply a case of ‘dry rot’ wherein an otherwise ethical and law-abiding family let standards fall in the melting pot of New World society?

It seems that Robert the Elder and John R. Livingston’s penchant for piracy was something of a family characteristic: the Livingstons have always been political opportunists and adventurers. The family were Scottish aristocrats who were highly favored by the Stuarts— Scotland’s royal family— from at least the time of James II (mid 1400s); the Livingstons on the whole were noted for being loyal to the person of the king.

In addition, the Livingstons were mercenaries at a time when royally-favored Brits were fighting it out with foreign merchants, religious radicals and social upstarts to control state-sponsored trade/piracy (as in “letters of marque”) in the New World, particularly Barbados. Prior to the British Civil War, Barbados had been a safe haven for royalist pirates, i.e. bringing in money for the Stuart clan. It swapped to Parliamentarian/Foreign/Radical Protestant control a few years into Cromwell’s war, and became a cause for concern for the Stuarts after the Restoration.

To borrow a concept from the Hapsburg sphere: the Livingstons were “patriots for me” with respect to the Stuarts. This put the clan in good favor with James VI and I, the “King James Bible” James, who entrusted his children to the Livingstons for their upbringing. It was James VI and I’s daughter Elisabeth of Bohemia, the “Winter Queen”, who was invited by the protestant Bohemian nobility to rule them in an attempt to stave off Hapsburg persecution: a sort of political ‘privateering’ venture. Her spirited (aggressive) lobbying helped convince her husband to accept this risky confrontation, which ended with Bohemia’s nobility being wiped out and replaced with a motley crew of Hapsburg hangers-on. The Bohemian people never felt well governed by this new ‘elite’, a situation which set the stage for political unrest that ultimately lead the Hapsburgs into a political partnership with the Galician criminal network and the disintegration of their empire.

Elizabeth Stuart, the ill-starred Queen of Bohemia or “Winter Queen” grew up at the Livingston household at Callendar in Scotland.

Callendar House in Falkirk, Scotland. Ancestral home of the Livingstons.

This fabulous pile was lost to the family because they were Jacobites during the Hanoverian Succession and supported James II (the “Old Pretender”) during the rising of 1715— in fairness, the honorable thing to do given their ancestral commitments. However, the family’s prestige had already been bruised by religious and political flip-flopping during the Civil War (1642–1651) and subsequent turmoil. They were mercenaries in the age of the New Model Army— dinosaurs.

Whatever poor decisions the Livingstons made between 1640-1715, blood still tells. This is nowhere more true than with the American branch of the Livingston family. That Crawford Livingston Jr. should join our own local pornographer in a daring scheme to corner the market in public-opinion-forming was only to be expected. That his film concern would go into business with the Roosevelt Junta to create modern Hollywood, a floating world where child grooming, race-politics, pirates and hookers are tirelessly plugged to a tune Chancellor Robert would appreciate, is also to be expected.

Ironically, Crawford didn’t make it long beyond the cannibalization of Mutual Film by other more vicious pimps.

Courtesy of FindAGrave.com

The Livingston story doesn’t end here though: they were also big into railroad development and post-Civil War government/finance conglomerates (“Wells Fargo”)… it just gets uglier, readers, but that’s for a different post.