The Stand Columbia Society is pleased to report some happy news. Last week, a King’s College Bachelor of Arts diploma issued in 1775 to John William Livingston unexpectedly showed up on the market. A small group of donors we are in contact with quickly raised the funds in a single afternoon to purchase it and donate it to the University. Yesterday, Friday, September 5, 2025, it arrived safely into the care of the wonderful staff at the University Archives, part of the Rare Book & Manuscript Library, as a gift of the Stand Columbia Society. You can see it below:
About the diploma
This diploma is an extraordinary find. It is hand-calligraphed on sheepskin (Columbia would not switch to parchment until 1790) and the names of those on it paint a complex picture of the American Revolution. It is in excellent condition, better than many of the other diplomas in our collection, some of which are sadly faded. The wax seal is largely intact, and you can clearly make out Alma Mater.
The text of the diploma is written in Latin and translates as:
The President of King’s College, which is established at New York in America by Royal Charter, by the order of the most honorable Governors of the same College, to all the faithful in Christ to whom these present letters shall come, everlasting greeting in the Lord.
Be it known to you that John William Livingston, a young man of the highest promise, alumnus of this Academy, who has conducted himself honorably and has diligently completed all studies and exercises required for the degree of Bachelor in Arts under the prescribed statutes, we have both approved and commended, and by unanimous consent have advanced to that degree, and to him we have granted and bestowed all the rights and privileges pertaining to that degree.
In greater assurance and fuller testimony of this act, we have caused our common seal, which in this matter we employ, to be affixed to these presents. Given at New York, on the sixteenth day of the month of May, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five.
Compare this to today’s Columbia College and General Studies diploma, which translates as:
We, the Trustees of Columbia University in the City Of New York, formerly King’s College, present our greetings to each and every one to whom this document may come. We inform you that [graduate’s name] has duly and lawfully completed all requirements appropriate to the degree of Bachelor Of Arts and has accordingly been advanced to that degree with all rights, privileges and honors customarily pertaining thereto.
In fuller testimony of this action, we have ensured that the signatures of the President of the University and of the Dean of Columbia College as well as our common seal be affixed to this diploma. Done at New York on the [day & month] in [year].
John William Livingston
John William Livingston (1754-1830) was a prominent merchant in New York. He came from the extended Livingston family, and William Livingston and Robert Livingston KC 1765 were both distant cousins. What is today Wallach Hall was once known as Livingston Hall, because as the joke went, “Livingston signed the Declaration of Independence [ed: actually, he helped draft it but didn’t sign it], and Ira Wallach signed a $2 million check.”
However, while the Livingstons included prominent founding fathers, John William Livingston’s family came from a Loyalist branch. During the American Revolution, he could go on to serve in the King’s Royal Rifle Corps. After the Revolution, he made his peace and unlike other Loyalists who would flee to Canada and found a rival King’s College there, he returned to New York City and lived out his life by all accounts in peace and as a prosperous merchant.
We know a bit about Livingston’s time at King’s College. We know that he overlapped with Alexander Hamilton and may have had classes in common with Hamilton, as Hamilton began his studies in 1774 with advanced standing, when Livingston was a junior. The diploma’s description notes that “it is likely that Hamilton was also friendly with Livingston, for when Hamilton was a student at Elizabethtown Academy, a preparatory school in New Jersey, he had come under the influence of another (related) William Livingston, who was a leading local intellectual and revolutionary with whom Hamilton had lived for a time.”
We also know that he was not exactly a model student. President Myles Cooper’s Black Book of disciplinary infractions noted that on December 9, 1773, a faculty member, Dr. Samuel Clossy, complained that Livingston joined several students in “making, one Evening after Prayers, so much Noise and Confusion as to cause him to stop his Anatomical Lecture.” For this offense, Livingston, branded a “delinquent”, was sentenced by the Governors’ Committee of Visitation to complete “such exercises as [President Cooper] shall judge proper, to be ready this Day Fortnight.”
Later, on April 11, 1775, the Committee of Visitation found that Livingston essentially didn’t do his homework, and decided that in order to be eligible to graduate the following month, he would be required “to translate daily into English, elegantly and correctly, one chapter of Livy, beginning at C.39 of B.4. till the second Tuesday In May (over and above all regular duties) then to be given in to the Board, at their annual meeting, which being approv’d of, and the exercises which they owe at present being paid, the Committee will recommend them to all reasonable lenity.”
To add insult to injury, the Governors also were apprised that Livingston and his friends Stiles and Davan went “into the Country, for a week together, without Leave” and were sentenced to translate passages into Latin. Making things even more embarrassing, on the Governors’ Committee of Visitation (and grimly assigning punishments) sat none other than John Livingston, John William’s father.
Myles Cooper
Another interesting figure that shows up here is Myles Cooper (1735-1785), King’s College’s President from 1763 to 1775.
According to our friend Professor Emeritus Robert A. McCaughey, Cooper wasn’t exactly enthralled with being King’s College’s President:
“[Myles Cooper] was mainly interested in his own advancement—and in eventually getting back to England. That was a familiar pattern: ambitious scholars took remote posts with the hope of being called back to the metropole. I saw something of the same thing at Harvard in the 1960s with new PhDs off teaching in Utah, feverishly writing their second book in hopes of being recalled back to Cambridge.”
Cooper and Hamilton were on good terms, even though Cooper was a conservative Loyalist and Hamilton had eagerly signed on to the revolutionary cause, publishing pamphlets, and even stealing cannons from the British.
Cooper didn’t shy away from tweaking revolutionaries, and was denounced by name in an April 25, 1775 public statement. On the evening of May 10, 1775, a mob sought him out to tar and feather him. A student, according to legend Alexander Hamilton himself although there is no firm evidence supporting this, alerted him to the threat and delayed the mob, allowing Cooper to escape to the docks, where he boarded the HMS Kingfisher the next morning. It would be a nice story if it were true, as it would bind our traditions of fearless inquiry, principled debate, and civil discourse to our earliest history.
Cooper got his wish. He returned to England, was named a Fellow at Oxford, wrote a terrible 34-page poem about his misadventures in North America, and “died suddenly from an apoplectic fit whilst amongst friends at a luncheon in Edinburgh” in 1785.
So what happened in 1775?
Commencement, scheduled for May 16, 1775, was cancelled “on account of the absence of Dr. Cooper.” Two more classes were admitted, in 1776 and 1777, and the class of 1776 technically had six graduates, but by then, “the students were dispersed, the library, apparatus &c were deposited in the City-Hall, & the College was turned into a Hospital.”
Thus, King’s College had the diploma made, a public Commencement was scheduled for May 16, 1775, and Myles Cooper signed it at some point before he fled on May 10, 1775. Even though there was no Commencement, John William Livingston earned and received his diploma.
Our warmest wishes for the fall semester
Artifacts like this diploma remind us that Columbia’s story has always been one of resilience, argument, and renewal. In 1775, classes scattered, commencement was canceled, and yet the College endured. Its graduates carried their education into a fractured world, and its records waited to be rediscovered centuries later.
This homecoming was only possible because a few friends of Columbia acted quickly. Their gift ensures that a piece of our shared story will not be lost to time or buried in a private collection, but preserved, studied, and enjoyed by generations to come. To them, we convey our sincere thanks—or, to borrow from the older tongue—gratias vobis.
That this diploma is back in our hands is more than a happy stroke of luck. It is a reminder that caring for an institution means tending to memory and choosing, again and again, to safeguard the fragile things that tell us who we are. We are pleased and proud that many hands acted quickly and faithfully to bring this diploma home.
For students just settling into the new semester, the Livingston diploma is a reminder that Columbia’s traditions have been tested before and always carried forward. It now belongs to all of you, a small but enduring part of the inheritance that ties your all-too-brief time here to centuries of Columbians past.