Bard 25 Site and Maps Gallery

Site Overview

Robert Livingston Tillotson appears in the Federal 1820 Town of Red Hook census with two family members. His father was Thomas Tillotson, MD, Surgeon General of the northern Continental Army, and his maternal uncle was Chancellor Robert R. Livingston, Jr., of Clermont. Dr. Tillotson had settled in Rhinebeck after the war for independence and in the 1790 census he owned several slaves. In the 1830 Federal census R. L. Livingston heads a household of 19 persons, suggesting that agricultural workers and servants, possibly former slaves, appear under his name. Records show that he sold Miramonte to Edwin Bartlett in 1865. A small exploratory trench indicated the strong likelihood that the anthropogenic depression was a cellar hole, while 181 shovel tests in the site evaluation phase of research documented the scatter of artifacts below surface. Only a few items were visible on top of the ground, in surface exposures at the foot of several trees in this wooded, rocky area.