Livingston Parish was created in 1832 from the southern portion of what was then St. Helena Parish, which occupied the area south of the present Louisiana-Mississippi boundary line and north of the Amite River and Lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain. Boundaries were amended in 1850 and again in 1869 to the present boundaries.
One of the Florida Parishes, it is generally believed that the new parish was named in honor of Edward Livingston, a U.S. Senator and Secretary of State under Andrew Jackson. However, it has also been argued that the parish may have been named for his brother, Robert Livingston, a well known lawyer and negotiator of the Louisiana Purchase as a minister to France.