City Readers Digital Historic Collections at the New York Society Library

Robert Richard Randall was a noted sea captain in life, and since his death in New York City on June 5, 1801, has been a philanthropist who has helped thousands of seafarers through the charity he directed be formed from his estate in New York City; later to be officially called The Trustees of the Sailors' Snug Harbor in the City Of New York. Randall's will directed an array of political, religious, and civic leaders in the city with the task of erecting an "Asylum or Marine Hospital, to be called the Sailors' Snug Harbor for the purpose of maintaining and supporting aged, decrepit, and worn-out sailors."

Randall was born in New Jersey about 1750. There seems nothing unusual about his life and he played no conspicuous part in political life. Like many thoughtful men, his dream of the future was his greatest achievement in life. His Manhattan estate was inherited from his father Captain Thomas Randall five years before Robert Randall himself died at age 51. A seaman himself, Randall possessed sympathy and appreciation of the difficult life of a sailor. He recognized the family kinship to the sea as well as indebtedness to it but he returned it measure for measure in the document that would one day give thousands of seamen a dignified existence in their later years- a trust to exist in perpetuity.