The Night Before Christmas

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A Visit from St. Nicholas, more commonly known as The Night Before Christmas and 'Twas the Night Before Christmas from its first line, is a poem first published anonymously under the title Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas in 1823 and later attributed to Clement Clarke Moore, who claimed authorship in 1837. Benjamin Moore (1818–1886), who married Mary Elizabeth Sing (1820–1895), in 1842, and was the father of Clement Clarke Moore [2] and grandfather of Barrington Moore Sr. UofUtahSingers, 'Twas the Night Before Christmas – University of Utah Combined Choirs, archived from the original on 21 December 2021 , retrieved 13 December 2018 Moore received a Bachelor of Arts from Columbia College as valedictorian of the class of 1798, and earned his Master's degree there in 1801. When Moore's maternal grandmother died in 1802 she left four slaves to Moore's parents. In his 1956 biography of Moore, Samuel W. Patterson asserted that the four remained with the Moore family and were not freed until the full abolition of slavery in New York in 1827, [33] and this assertion has been repeated in many other works. It is incorrect. Manumission records show that Benjamin and Charity Moore freed one of the four, Charles Smith, in 1803. In the 1810 U.S. Census Benjamin Moore is listed as having two slaves in his household, who according to manumission records were subsequently freed in 1811 and 1813 and did not have the same names as the inherited slaves. In the 1820 Census, Clement Moore's first as a head of household, he is listed as having no slaves. [34] Personal life [ edit ]

Crump, William D (September 4, 2013). The Christmas Encyclopedia, 3d edition. New York: McFarland & Company. p.431. ISBN 978-0786468270. Our daughter and I had not read this together since she was very little but she could still recite some passages as I read. At age 12, near 13, she thinks that she is too old and mature for many "childish" things, but not for this classic beloved Christmas poem. One sign of her growing maturity is that she was also interested in my telling her facts about Dr. Clement Moore from the very good introduction to this free Kindle edition. Unfortunately, as usual, there were no illustrations in this edition. Seth Kaller, an expert on authenticating historical documents, said the matter was in "Obama birth certificate territory." In An American Anthology, 1787–1900, editor Edmund Clarence Stedman reprinted the Moore version of the poem, including the Dutch spelling of "Donder" and German spelling of "Blitzen" that he adopted, rather than the version from 1823 "Dunder and Blixem" that is more similar to the old Dutch "Donder en Blixem" that translates to " Thunder and Lightning". [5] Authorship controversy [ edit ] Moore, James W. (1903). Rev. John Moore of Newtown, Long Island, and some of his descendants. The Library of Congress. Easton, Pa., Printed for the publisher by the Chemical Publishing Co. p.108.

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Do parents need to stop encouraging their young children to believe in Santa Claus? When the child grows up, are parents expected to correct this by saying something like, ”Now that you are a grownup, sorry if we fooled you but there is no Santa.” James W. Moore (1903), Rev. John Moore of Newtown, Long Island and some of his Descendants. Easton, PA: Chemical Publishing Company, p.107.

Margaret Elliot Moore (1815–1845), who married John Doughty Ogden (1804–1887), a grandson of U.S. Attorney Abraham Ogden and nephew of U.S. Representative David A. Ogden. [38]When the government of New York City decided on a street grid in Manhattan, based on the Commissioner's Plan of 1811, the new Ninth Avenue was projected to go through the middle of the Chelsea estate. In 1818, Moore wrote and published a pamphlet calling on other "Proprietors of Real Estate" to oppose the manner in which the city was being developed. He thought it was a conspiracy designed to increase political patronage and appease the city's working class, and argued that making landowners bear the costs of the streets laid through their property was "a tyranny no monarch in Europe would dare to exercise." He also criticized the grid plan and the flattening of hills as ill-advised. [31]

By some accounts, Moore, at forty-three, was an austere man who frowned upon merrymaking and comported himself with a solemnity befitting a Christian man of letters and the steward of his family’s thirty-acre Manhattan estate. His father, Benjamin Moore 1788KC, 1789CC, 1789HON, had been president of Columbia College and bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church of New York, and in 1804 he had administered holy communion to Alexander Hamilton 1788HON, who lay mortally wounded in a house in Greenwich Village. Clement Moore, who finished first in his class at Columbia and later produced the first Hebrew lexicon in the US, was mindful of his literary reputation and never intended his Christmas confection to be heard beyond the walls of Chelsea House, as his English-born grandfather had named the manor. Siefker, Phyllis (1997). Santa Claus, Last of the Wild Men. McFarland & Company. p.4. ISBN 0-7864-0246-6. A Gift for America's Christmas Poet: Rehabilitation". Bloomberg.com. December 22, 2021 . Retrieved December 8, 2022.

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Foster’s textual evidence is ingenious, and his essay is as entertaining as a lively lawyer’s argument to the jury. If he had limited himself to offering textual evidence about similarities between “The Night before Christmas” and poems known to have been written by Livingston, he might have made a provocative case for reconsidering the authorship of America’s most beloved poem–a poem that helped create the modern American Christmas. But Foster does not stop there; he goes on to argue that textual analysis, in tandem with biographical data, proves that Clement Clarke Moore could not have written “The Night before Christmas.” In the words of an article on Foster’s theory that appeared in the New York Times, “He marshals a battery of circumstantial evidence to conclude that the poem’s spirit and style are starkly at odds with the body of Moore’s other writings.” With that evidence and that conclusion I take strenuous exception. Much of the neighborhood was once the property of Maj. Thomas Clarke, Clement's maternal grandfather and a retired British veteran of the French and Indian War. Clarke named his house for a hospital in London that served war veterans. 'Chelsea' was later inherited by Thomas Clarke's daughter, Charity Clarke Moore, and ultimately by grandson Clement and his family. Clement Clarke Moore's wife, Catharine Elizabeth Taylor, was of English and Dutch descent being a direct descendant of the Van Cortlandt family, once the major landholders in the lower Hudson Valley of New York. Samuel W. Patterson, The Poet of Christmas Eve: A Life of Clement Clarke Moore, 1779–1863, (New York: Morehouse-Gorman Co, 1956) Twas the Night Before Christmas (2022) is a Hallmark Channel movie about a town's annual Christmas Eve courtroom production debating the true authorship of the poem.

As a girl, Moore's mother, Charity Clarke, wrote letters to her English cousins that are preserved at Columbia University and show her disdain for the policies of the English Monarchy and her growing sense of patriotism in pre-revolutionary days. Rosewarne, Lauren (2017). Analyzing Christmas in Film: Santa to the Supernatural. Lexington Books. pp.132–133. ISBN 9781498541824 . Retrieved 15 September 2022. Additionally, in 2000, forensic linguist and Vassar College English professor Donald Foster concluded in his book, Author Unknkown, that Livingston authored the poem. How the poem ended up at the Troy Sentinel is not exactly clear, but some claim a friend of the Moore family sent it in.

'Quite likely that the matter can never be settled'

Clement Clarke Moore (July 15, 1779 – July 10, 1863) was an American writer, scholar and real estate developer. He is best known as author of the Christmas poem " A Visit from St. Nicholas." a b Genealogical Record of the Saint Nicholas Society: Advanced Sheets, First Series. Saint Nicholas Society of the City of New York. 1902. p.42 . Retrieved January 18, 2019. Christmas Eve" ( Noch pered Rozhdestvom, 1832) by Nikolai Gogol (from Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka) A Visit from St. Nicholas," which later became widely known by its opening line, "'Twas the Night Before Christmas," was first published anonymously in 1823. Moore publicly claimed authorship in 1837, and this was not disputed during his lifetime, but a rival claimant emerged later and scholars now debate the identity of the author, calling on textual and handwriting analysis as well as other historical sources. At least that's the opinion of Mary Van Deusen, who claims her great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, Henry Livingston Jr., a poet and farmer from a Poughkeepsie, N.Y., is the true author of the iconic holiday verse.