Harriet Livingston (1783–1826)

Harriet Livingston (1783–1826). Daughter of Walter Livingston (1740–1797, Continental Congressman) and Cornelia Schuyler (1746–1822). Married first on January 7, 1806 to inventor and engineer Robert Fulton (1765–1815), with whom she partnered in launching the world's first commercially successful steamboat, the North River Steamboat (also called the Clermont) — Harriet was aboard its historic maiden voyage up the Hudson in August 1807, and the Livingston-Fulton steamboat monopoly transformed American transportation. Robert Fulton's financial backer was Harriet's uncle Chancellor Robert R. Livingston, who had met Fulton in Paris during the Louisiana Purchase negotiations. After Robert Fulton's death in 1815, she married Charles Augustus Dale (1784–1832) in 1816. Mother of Cornelia Livingston Fulton (1812–1893, m. Edward Charles Crary) and Mary Livingston Fulton (1813–1861, m. Robert Morris Ludlow).