The building of the estate on which Kean University is situated was begun in 1760, when lawyer William Livingston, who would become New Jersey's first elected governor (on August 31, 1776) and a Revolutionary War patriot and signer of the United States Constitution, bought 120 acres in then-Connecticut Farms and Elizabethtown, New Jersey, across the river from his New York home, in hopes of establishing a country residence.