Robert Schuyler

Robert Schuyler or Robert Livingston Schuyler He had a role in America's first large-scale stock fraud on the New York and New Haven Railroad.

His paternal grandparents were Philip Schuyler (1733–1804), a Revolutionary War General and U.S. Senator, and Catherine Van Rensselaer (1734–1803), a member of the prominent Van Rensselaer family. His maternal grandfather was John Rutsen (1743–1771), a descendant of Wilhelmus Beekman and inheritor of a large portion of the Beekman Patent, which encompassed much of what is now Dutchess County.

Schuyler graduated with a B.A. degree where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa society, and the Porcellian Club, along with Samuel Atkins Eliot, Wyllys Lyman, Samuel Joseph May, Thomas Russell Sullivan, Charles Henry Warren, and Francis William Winthrop. His mathematical thesis at Harvard was on "fluxional solutions."

Career Schuyler started his career with steamboats. In 1838, he was president of the New York and Boston Transportation Company, of which William W. Woolsey, Moses B. Ives, and James G. King were among the directors. The company later became known as the New Jersery Steam Navigation and Transportation Company as well as the Transportation Company. He owned steamboats, including one called the Chancellor Livingston in the 1840s, which was his principal business. Around 1846, he became involved with the railroads along with his half-brother, George Lee Schuyler, who formed R. & G. L. Schuyler, a railroad contracting firm. thereby earning the title of "America’s first railroad king." He was also secretary of the Brooklyn and Jamaica Railroad, treasurer of the Housatonic Railroad Company, and vice-president of the New Jersey Railroad and Transportation Company.

During his career, Schuyler was considered a master negotiator and when he was president of the Harlem Railroad, he arranged a running agreement with Edwin D. Morgan, then the president of the Hudson River Railroad, and later a U.S. Senator and Governor of New York. following his company's initial purchase of a finished portion of the railway from Jacksonville to Meredosia in the 1840s. The Railroad was the recipient of the first federal land grant. Upon his resignation following the 1854 scandal, he was succeeded by the vice-president of the Railroad, William Porter Burrall. and after the railroad's stock price dropped in the summer of 1854, he wrote to the board of directors resigning and stating "Your attention to the stock ledgers of your Company is essential, as you will find there is much that is wrong." To compound matters, Schuyler had used the fraudulent stock as collateral against loans taken out by several people, including one from Cornelius Vanderbilt for .

Due to Schuyler's vast business interest and prominence at the highest levels of New York society, While the Justice Daniel P. Ingraham of the New York State Supreme Court initially found that the stock issued by Schuyler was void, the appeal eventually made it the U.S. Supreme Court, where the fraudulently issued stocks were upheld. The newspapers of the day covered the fraud and its effects for several years.

Schuyler wrote to The New York Times in July 1855, attempting to explain away the scandal as a misunderstanding stating "I hope you will publish this statement, which I have prepared under great difficulty--without documents, and upon your report alone--in the greatest debility of body, and in broken spirit, but with clear recollection."

Following the scandal, Schuyler fled to Canada through Quebec. had a long-term relationship with Lucinda Waldron "Lucy" Wood (1807–1882). Together, they were the parents of six children. Other reports indicated that he actually married Wood in 1826, but didn't socially acknowledge the marriage until the 1850s.

Julia Wood Schuyler, who married Rev. William Orne Lamson (1824–1909) in 1850. Robert Sands Schuyler (1830–1895), who married Caroline E. Acker (1840–1905) in 1864. Catherine Schuyler George Schuyler daughter of Oliver Lorenzo Barbour and niece of Chancellor Reuben H. Walworth, in 1859. His coffin was sent back to New York and he was buried at Greenridge Cemetery in Saratoga Springs, New York.

Following his death, his New York City home and its contents were auctioned off and reportedly became a brothel run by "Mrs. Van Ness." After his death, his widow moved back to the United States and retired to a cabin on Saratoga Lake. who died at 21 years of age at Darfour in Upper Egypt from malarious fever while serving in the Egyptian Army as a mercenary, and George Henry Lamson (1852–1882), a doctor in Paris who developed a morphine addiction, which was said to have caused him to murder his wife's brother. He was found guilty of murder and hanged in 1882 at Wandsworth Gaol in London.

Through his youngest son William, he was the grandfather of Philip William Schuyler (b. 1861), who married Amanda Mason Erwen, daughter of Robert Moody Erwen and Agnes (née Gominger) Erwen, in 1886.