“’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse…”

This is the beginning of the beloved iconic holiday poem, and the author is known as Clement Clarke Moore, but was he actually the author of the poem?

Clement Clarke Moore said that he composed The Night before Christmas after returning from the market. He was struck by the beauty of the moonlight on the snow and the brightness of a star lit sky. This, together with thoughts of the holiday season, gave him the idea of writing a few lines in honor of St Nicholas. He told the New York Historical Society that he had drawn inspiration for St. Nicholas from a portly, Dutchman with a ruddy complexion from the neighborhood, and used him as his model.

Mary Van Deusen claims that her five times great grandfather, Major Henry Livingston Jr., a farmer and a poet from Poughkeepsie, New York, is the true author, and that the poem was not written by Clement Clarke Moore. Van Deusen has been trying to convince the public for many years that her ancestor deserves the credit for this legendary prose.

“To me, it’s just righting a wrong. I feel there’s something fundamentally wrong with people stealing other people’s work.” Van Deusen said.

Van Deusen, created a detailed website and says, “it still makes me very, very sad that the truth isn’t easy to get out there.”

Beginnings

Henry Livingston Jr.

“Major Henry Livingston Jr. was born in Poughkeepsie, New York on October 13, 1748; he established his home at Locust Grove just before the American Revolution, where he held a commission as Major under Montgomery in the expedition to Canada. He returned home ill, and after recovering, lived a busy and useful life at Locust Grove until his death in 1828. He was a farmer; a lover of nature and of country life; a surveyor; a justice of the peace; he wrote poems; painted pictures; drew maps; went to dances; was fond of music and he played both violin and flute; loved children; admired pretty girls; was a fun-maker; had a favored exclamation: Dunder and Blitzen. Some of his serious writings reveal a truly devout religious faith. There may also be found in his writings traces of a good knowledge of geography, of foreign and domestic politics and of classical literature.

His education was very good. He was classically educated, scientifically, and musically inclined, and remembered by his children as being a walking encyclopedia on any subject. He was certainly insatiably curious about everything, and passionate in his approach to life and learning.”

“Henry was hardworking and hard playing. He was a family man, with no ambition greater than the desire to make his family happy. He was a strong believer in the equality of women (remember his father’s tombstone!), and in their education; and he believed in the value of the individual. He spoke of Indians with the greatest respect and familiarity, and he was tolerant of the beliefs of others.” (Helen Wilkinson Reynolds, a Dutchess County historian, describes Henry’s life.)

“His hobbies included being a journalist and illustrator; Henry contributed engravings, poems, and prose satires to Poughkeepsie newspapers and New York City magazines, adopting such quirky pseudonyms as “Seignior Whimsicallo Pomposo,” “Wizard,” and “Professor Zeritef Sharslow.”

“The culture of Poughkeepsie was New York Dutch, although that was starting to change. His mother’s family, the Conklins, were heavily Dutch and Henry’s descendants mention that one of Henry’s favorite expressions was the Dutch oath, “Dunder and Blixem!” Henry’s grandfathers, father, and brothers were Elders and Deacons in the Dutch Reformed Church, and Henry, himself, was a Deacon. Brother John Henry became a famous minister, as well as President of Rutgers.”
(Don Foster, in his book Author Unknown, describes Henry.)

Clement Clarke Moore

Clement Clarke Moore was born in New York City on July 15, 1779, the son of the Reverend Benjamin Moore and Charity Clarke Moore. An only child, Clement was tutored at home by his father until he entered Columbia College, according to his biographer Samuel White Patterson, “he graduated in 1798 at the head of his class, as his father had, thirty years earlier.”

Moore was a professor of classics at the General Theological Seminary in New York, and wrote a famous scholarly work, A Compendious Lexicon of the Hebrew Language. He was the son of the Most Right Reverend Benjamin Moore, Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in New York, and was born at Newtown, Long Island, about the year 1778. In 1799, he graduated as Bachelor of Arts at Columbia College, and, applying himself to the study of Hebrew, he published in 1809, in two volumes, a Hebrew, and English lexicon, with notes, a grammar, and a complete vocabulary of the Psalms. The publication of this work led to a more general study and rendered easier the cultivation of that ancient language and literature in our theological seminaries.

In 1801, he earned his MA from Columbia University, and was awarded an LLD in 1829. In 1813, Clement Moore married 19-year-old Catharine Elizabeth Taylor, with whom he eventually had nine children. He was a very religious man, and gave a large portion of land that he inherited as part of his Chelsea estate, and now called Chelsea Square, to the General Theological Seminary, where he was a professor of Oriental and Greek literature from 1823 until he retired in 1850. At his retirement, he purchased a house in Newport, Rhode Island, where he died on July 10, 1863.

Arguments

MacDonald P. Jackson, an Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Auckland, New Zealand published his book ‘Who Wrote The Night Before Christmas,’ which analyzes the Clement Clarke Moore vs. Henry Livingston dilemma.

Donald Foster, an English professor, and forensic linguist from Vassar College, concluded in his book, “Author Unknown,” that Henry Livingston Jr., authored the poem.

Stephen Nissenbaum, professor emeritus of history at the University of Massachusetts, who wrote an article in defense of Moore back in 2001.

Seth Kaller, an expert in acquiring, authenticating, and appraising American historic documents and artifacts hired Joe Nickell, a former professional stage magician, investigator of historical, paranormal, forensic mysteries, myths, and hoaxes to investigate the allegations. Nickell’s conclusion was that Clement Clarke Moore is the author.

“There is literally no contemporary evidence that Livingston ever claimed to be or was the author. He didn’t, and he wasn’t,” said Kaller, who at one time owned an original manuscript of the poem, said to be in Moore’s handwriting.

What Is Known As Fact

Clement Clarke Moore and Henry Livingston Jr., never met, and Livingston Jr., died in 1828, before Moore took credit for the poem.

The poem was first published in a Poughkeepsie newspaper long before it appeared in the Troy Sentinel, but no copies of the paper containing the poem have ever turned up.

A Visit from St. Nicholas as it was first called was afterwards published, ‘anonymously,’ in New York’s Troy Sentinel newspaper on December 23, 1823. Not only did the poem became successful, but according to the New York Historical Society, the poem’s description of old St. Nick “permanently connected St. Nicholas to Christmas, and led to the idea of Santa Claus.” The poem also established the names of Santa’s eight tiny reindeer, except for Rudolph.

For 14-years, the author of the poem remained unknown.

Several magazine and newspaper articles appeared, especially during the 1940s, questioning the authorship, but scholars today give the credit to Livingston.

How The Poem Came To Be Published

Moore claimed he wrote the poem he named A Visit from St. Nicholas, and read it to his children on Christmas Eve. A friend visiting from upstate New York sent it to a newspaper editor without permission from Moore who published it the following year. This would be Harriet Butler, the eldest daughter of Reverend Dr. David Butler, then rector of St. Paul’s church, in the city of Troy. Butler saw the poem and quickly copied the verses, intending to read them to the children at the rectory. She was so impressed with the verses that she sent a copy to an editor, and they were printed in the Troy Sentinel on December 23, 1823, accompanied with an illustration of Santa Claus on his rounds, and preceded with an introduction by the editor. Oddly though, the name of the author did not appear. It is said that Moore was displeased at first, as in his opinion the poem had slight literary merit, but it instantly became popular, and for years the republication of the verses at Christmastime was one of the most anticipated features of the newspapers.

In 1837, Charles Fenno Hoffman, author, poet, and editor of The New York Book of Poetry, declared his friend New York scholar and author Clement Clarke Moore as the author of the poem.

When Norman Tuttle, the owner of the Troy Sentinel, corresponded with Moore just before his book was published in 1844, Tuttle described editor, Orville L. Holley, as saying that he had received the poem from Harriet Butler the wife of Daniel Sackett. There appears to be some sort of connection between the Butlers and the Sacketts.

Research librarian, Honor Conklin, said about the connections between the families. “It probably wasn’t religion, since Reverend Butler was Episcopalean, and Daniel Sackett was active in starting up the second Presbyterian Church of Troy. Daniel Sackett, editor Orville Holley, and Reverend Butler were all members of the same anti-slavery society, the Troy Colonization Society. Conklin noted, “Daniel Sackett and Orville Holley worked next door to one another. The Troy Sentinel was located at 225 River Street, and Sackett & Lane Crockery was located at 221-2 River Street.”

Clement Clarke Moore Claims the Poem

Before Moore published the Christmas poem as his own, he wrote to Norman Tuttle, the owner of the Troy Sentinel, the original publisher of the poem. His question was whether Tuttle had known the author of the poem, and Tuttle wrote back that he didn’t. This letter appeared in Don Foster’s book with Don’s observation that it looked much like something Moore read as meaning that the coast was clear to publish the poem under his own name.

Troy. Feb 26. 1844.

Prof C C Moore,

Sir – Yours of 23d inst. making inquiry concerning the publication of “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” is just received. The piece was first published in the Troy Sentinel December 23, 1823, with an introductory notice by the Editor, Orville L. Holley, Esq., and again two or three years after that. At the time of its first publication, I did not know who the Author was, but have since been informed that you were the Author. I understand from Mr. Holley that he received it from Mrs. Sackett, the wife of Mr. Daniel Sackett who was then a merchant in this city. It was twice published in the Troy Sentinel, and being much admired and sought after by the younger class, I procured the Engraving, which you will find on the other side of this sheet, and have published several editions of it. The Sentinel has for several years been numbered with the things that were, and Mr. Holley, I understand, is now in Albany, editing the Albany Daily Advertiser. I was myself the proprietor of the Sentinel.
Very Respectfully
Yours, & c
N Tuttle

The letter included an enclosure, a copy of Tuttle’s 1830 broadsheet. And on that sheet are marked a few handwritten changes; who made the changes is unknown

Fifty-Five Changes

Subsequent editors made countless changes the poem. The most important fixes were the extensively edited broadsheet version from about 1830, published by Norman Tuttle who had published the poem. Besides counting each line of the reindeer names, there are fifty-five editing differences between the poem as originally published by Tuttle in 1823, and the poem extensively edited by Tuttle around 1830.

The only major change we can attribute to Moore and not to Tuttle is the name change for another reindeer, Blixem, who McClure was the first to turn to Blixen in his 1825, Almanack, which years later become Blitzen.

The reason this variant of the poem is so important is that it was an enclosure in the letter Tuttle wrote to Moore, responding to Moore’s question whether Tuttle had known in 1823, who the author of the poem really was. Soon after receiving Tuttle’s letter, Moore included the famous poem a ‘Visit from St. Nicholas’ in his book, ‘Poems.’

Seventy years later, on August 4, 1920, Dr. William S. Thomas wrote an article in the Christian Science Monitor, about the Livingston family claims. “Moore’s grandson, Casimir Moore, had his second cousin, Maria Jephson Post O’Conor; write out two depositions to counter the Livingston claims. Maria, then sixty-five, explained that her father had gotten the story of the Christmas poem directly from Moore himself. She explained, “Moore also told my father when he came to publish the same, with some of his other poems; he only made two slight changes in the lines as originally written by him.”

However, the version of the poem that Moore used as the base of his 1844 poem, were not the lines originally supposedly written by him, but were the 1830, version of the poem that Tuttle had extensively edited.

What would have happened if Tuttle had enclosed the original 1823 copy of the poem in his letter, instead of the heavily edited one of 1830? No prudent poet would fail to keep a copy of his own writing, and instead copy someone else’s edits as Moore did; it seems more like a lapse of judgment, or a liar’s blunder.

The Reindeer

When A Visit From St. Nicholas appeared in the Troy Sentinel of 1823, New York newspaper published by Norman Tuttle. In this first publication, it would be very difficult to recognize the familiar eight reindeer.

Now! Dasher, now! Dancer, now! Prancer and Vixen,
On! Comet, on! Cupid, on! Dunder and Blixem;

Trying to say their names while closely following the punctuation is difficult. The lines are so well known that it’s very difficult to mess up their reading. And the last words of the lines don’t even rhyme! Editors felt the same way about it, and edited away.

In 1825, Grigg’s Almanack tried to fix the rhythm by changing the end of the first line to now Prancer and Vixen.

That same year, McClure’s Magazine added their fix to the rhyme by changing the name of Blixem to Blixen.

In early 1828, a few weeks after Christmas, and just before Henry’s death, the Poughkeepsie Journal reprinted the poem. Henry’s hometown paper used the identical two lines for the names of what they called red deer.

However, the biggest change to the poem occurred under the editorial direction of the first publisher, Norman Tuttle. In 1830, Tuttle published the poem as a single page broadsheet, and this time the lines read with the rhythm that we are familiar with today. As long as he was at it, Tuttle included twenty-one other changes, as well.

Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer! now Vixen!
On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Dunder and Blixem!

In 1837, Charles Fenno Hoffman, a friend of Moore’s, published the poem, and for the first time, put Moore’s name on it, but Hoffman also made some changes. His approach was more a mix and match. For the first line, he took the 1830 Troy version, but kept McClure’s change to the rhyming Blixen. For the second line, Hoffman went back to the original rhythm of the 1823 version. The most important change though was in that line with the renaming of Dunder, changed to Donder.

Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer! now Vixen!
On! Comet, on! Cupid, on! Donder and Blixen!

Afterwards, it was Moore’s turn with the publication of his book Poems

Major Henry Livingston Jr.’s Ancestors Discovery

It wasn’t until 1859 to 1862 that Livingston’s descendants discovered that Moore was claiming credit for their ancestor’s poem. The issue incensed them, but they couldn’t do much about the perceived injustice of someone claiming a poem they had known their entire lives, as belonging to Henry. The presence of several Episcopalian ministers in the family at the time is thought to have occasioned that early silence, since Moore held a prominent position within the church seminary.

In 1899, Livingston’s family was pushed into the limelight regarding their belief in their ancestor’s authorship. In a December 1899 issue of the Sun, a Long Island, New York newspaper published by another Henry Livingston, this Henry argued the rightful author of, A Visit from St. Nicholas was, in fact, his grandsire. And though the article did bring together other descendants to share their stories, it didn’t result in much of an impact on the public’s attribution of the poem to Moore.

It wasn’t until 1920, that another descendant, William Sturges Thomas, decided to try his hand at the authorship issue again. This time, Thomas was successful in bringing the conflicting claims to the public’s attention in articles in major New York City publications. However, after the interest from the stories faded, Moore’s claim to the poem’s authorship was left undisturbed.

But unbeknown to Thomas, his articles did have an impact. Casimir de Rham Moore, a descendant of Clement Moore, was disturbed enough to get a signed deposition from a second cousin, Maria Jephson O’Conor, telling a story that she had been told by her father, a story that had been told to him by Moore, himself.

What Moore said to Maria’s father was that when Moore had returned from his turkey errand on that 1822 Christmas Eve, he had gone into his study and written down with no changes, the poem he had invented and memorized while driving along those snowy city streets. This explained why no manuscript existed for Moore with the expected changes engendered by composition. The style was obviously so natural to Moore that it never tried to be repeated, except in a particularly nasty piece about a rooster and a pig. However, the important part of the deposition was Moore’s statement that the original manuscript needed only two slight changes when he came to publish it with some of his other poems.

December 20, 1920
109 East 38th Street
New York

Clement C. Moore married Catherine Eliza Taylor, sister of my grandfather Elliot Taylor. My late father, Colonel Henry V.A. Post, married Maria Farquahar Taylor, daughter of my said grandfather.

Under these circumstances, my father became very well acquainted with Mr. Moore. My father told me Mr. Moore himself related to him the following circumstances under which he came to write the poem entitled “A Visit from St. Nicholas.”

It was Christmas Eve and Mrs. Moore was packing baskets of provisions to be sent to various people in the neighborhood, as was her custom. She found one turkey was lacking and so told her husband. Though late, he said he would try to get one from the market.

On his return from the market, he was struck by the beauty of the moonlight on the snow and the brightness of the star lit sky. This, together with the thoughts of the holiday season, suggested to him the idea of writing a few lines in honor of St Nicholas. He told my father he immediately went to his study and wrote the poem.

Mr. Moore also told my father when he came to publish the same, with some of his other poems; he only made two slight changes in the lines as originally written by him.

Maria Jephson O’Conor

The above Mrs. John C. O’Conor (nee Post) read and signed the above statement in my presence the 23rd day of December 19020 [sic]

Casimir de R. Moore

Authorship

In 1844, Clement Clarke Moore acknowledged authorship, and included ‘A Visit From Saint Nicholas’ in his collection entitled ‘Poems,’ the original publisher and seven others had already acknowledged his authorship. The poem was reprinted many times.
Moore wrote four manuscript copies that he signed, and people who knew him credited him with authorship.

Moore’s poetry took a backseat to his studies in Oriental and Greek literature, securing a professorship position at Columbia University, and authoring two volumes of a Hebrew dictionary, while maintaining a second professorship at the General Theological Seminary. Moore had a reputation of being a serious man, who scolded children.

The poem seen as evidence that Moore was the capable writer of A Visit from St. Nicholas, is The Pig and the Rooster. The first stanza of the poem reads:

On a warm sunny day, in the midst of July,
A lazy young pig lay stretched out in his sty,
Like some of his betters, most solemnly thinking
That the best things on earth are good eating and drinking.
At length, to get rid of the gnats and the flies,
He resolv’d, from his sweet meditations to rise;
And, to keep is skin pleasant, and pliant, and cool,
He plung’d him, forthwith, in the next muddy pool.
-Clement Clarke Moore

Don Foster commented. “In The Pig and the Rooster, written around 1833, Moore allegorizes a conceited young rooster, and a lazy young pig, a fashion-monger and a wine-bibbing glutton, and a counselor owl who despises them both. Moore’s supporters always point to the form of this anapestic Pig and Rooster fable as evidence that Moore really was capable of writing a children’s poem like A Visit from St. Nicholas. Major Livingston’s heirs point to the content as evidence that he couldn’t have.

The earliest poem of Henry Livingston is in a September 9, 1775 letter he wrote to his wife from his military post prior to heading north with General Montgomery’s invasion of Canada. The poems from his manuscript book begin with one for Easter, dated 1784, and then continue with an older poem, Job from 1776.

Livingston also has a strong case. He was fortunate to avoid financial hardship, and fought as a soldier in the American Revolutionary War. Scholars note that the Livingston’s works exemplified funny, creative, and pleasant qualities. In regards to his poetry, Livingston was not published; instead, he chose to keep his writings for his family and for himself. One of Livingston’s poems, Beekman was originally a letter his brother, and reads as follows:

Letter To My Brother Beekman
To my dear brother Beekman I sit down to write
Ten minutes past eight and a very cold night.
Not far from me sits with a baullancy cap on
Our very good couzin, Elizabeth Tappen,
A tighter young seamstress you’d ne’er wish to see
And she (blessings on her) is sewing for me.
New shirts & new cravats this morning cut out
Are tumbled in heaps and lye huddled about.
My wardrobe (a wonder) will soon be enriched
With ruffles new hemmed & wristbands new stitched.
Believe me dear brother tho women may be
Compared to us, of inferiour degree
Yet still they are useful I vow with a fegs
When our shirts are in tatters & jackets in rags.

Now for news my sweet fellow first learn with a sigh
That matters are carried here gloriously high
Such gadding such ambling such jaunting about
To tea with Miss Nancy to sweet Willy’s rout
New parties at coffee then parties at wine
Next day all the world with the Major must dine

Then bounce all hands to Fishkill must go in a clutter
To guzzle bohea and destroy bread & butter
While you at New Lebanon stand all forlorn
Behind the cold counter from ev’ning to morn
The old tenor merchants push nigher & nigher
Till fairly they shut out poor Baze from the fire.

Out out my dear brother Aunt Amy’s just come
With a flask for molasses & a bottle for rum
Run! help the poor creature to light from her jade
You see the dear lady’s a power afraid.

Souse into your arms she leaps like an otter
And smears your new coat with her piggin of butter
Next an army of shakers your quarters beleager
With optics distorted & visages meagre
To fill their black runlets with brandy & gin
Two blessed exorcists to drive away sin.

But laugh away sorrow nor mind it a daisy
Since it matters but little my dear brother Bazee
Whether here you are rolling in pastime & pleasure
Or up at New Lebanon taffety measure
If the sweetest of lasses Contentment you find
And the banquet enjoy of an undisturb’d mind
Of friendship & love let who will make a pother
Believe me dear Baze your affectionate brother
Will never forget the fifth son of his mother.

P.S. If it suits your convenience, remit if you please
To my good brother Paul an embrace & a squeeze.

Beekman reflects A Visit From St. Nicholas, with its light, fun style, written in a similar grammatical and poetical structure with almost precisely the same lilt.

Donald Foster noted that Livingston’s pattern is to use the word “all” repeatedly throughout his works just as the Christmas poet writes in the first line, “‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house.”

Livingston continued publishing Carrier Addresses through 1823, using his typical style of changing rhythms within the poem and using many of his old familiar terms.

An ancient sage was once requir’d
To name the object most desired;
Reply’d in brief, nor less sublime,
Twas sum’d in one short word, ’twas TIME.

With Time the fair creation rose
And steady Time still onward goes
With ceaseless pace, ’till that great day
When in portentous dread array
‘Th Angelic herald’s trump shall pour
These awful words “TIME IS NO MORE.”
But still that solemn hour shall come,
The tide of Time goes rolling on,
And each expiring billow view
‘Th expansive heaving of the new.
…
But ’tis neither fair or witty
Thus to urge my PATRONS’ pity;
Pity! no, I here disclaim it,
You yourselves won’t let me name it.
On her MERIT rests thy Muse,
Grace her kindly if you choose.

As you have smiled on me may heaven smile upon you,
The sky o’er your heads be enchantingly blue,
The streamlets and rivers, which flow at your feet
Be smooth as the mirror, as the eglantine sweet,
No thorn in the roses that lie in your road,
And the angel of PEACE hov’ring o’er your abode.

Livingston filled his literary notebooks with stories about Thor, the Norse god whose chariot was pulled by flying goats, and he wrote about Lapland’s reindeer. Perhaps the most compelling part of this debate tends to be the timespan. In 1808, Livingston’s family recalls the poet reciting the poem for them.

Until the year 2000, only Livingston’s manuscript poems were known. The original pages are now available thanks to Livingston descendant Stephen Livingston Thomas. Tryon described them in his 1920 article, “Important amongst this material is a manuscript book of about 45 poems, all of them short and the greater part of them humorous and playful, dating from 1784 to 1789. One-third of them are composed in pairs of anapestic verses, as is the ballad of St. Nicholas.”

Henry Litchfield West asked in a 1921 article in Bookman, “Who Wrote ”Twas the Night Before Christmas?” West had his own opinion of the answer.

“A further examination of Livingston’s versifications discloses his delight in the use of such rhymes as “clatter” and “matter,” “belly” and “jelly,” “elf” and “self,” all of which are to be found in “St. Nicholas.” He was fond of repetitive phrases, such as “to the top of the porch, to the top of the wall.” He invariably used the word mamma, when referring to his wife, while the adverbial use of the word all and the odd usage of gave, occurring frequently both in his verses and the Christmas poem, are cited as additional evidence in his favor. Then, further, he was fond of the idea of levitation, while tininess frequently appealed to him. In one of his poems, he describes Oberon as riding in a tiny royal coach made of a nutshell drawn by “green catydids.” And, finally, he repeatedly wove into his lines some references to articles of clothing shoes, soft shammy gloves, ruffles, wristbands, new shirts, cravats, and even chemises just as in “St. Nicholas,” there is a description of “mamma in her kerchief” and “I in my cap.” Surely if Livingston did not write, “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” he wrote much that was cast in the same mold.

James Thurber had more to say in his 1927 New Yorker piece:

“Mr. Livingston, a statesman and a soldier, wrote a book of poems too. ‘Twas the Night’ isn’t included in it, but nearly half of the verses are in its meter, and many of them are said to display the same tricks of expression and phrasings.”

Moore alleges to have penned the poem on Christmas Eve, 1823. In 1837, Moore gave his permission to attach his name to “A Visit From St. Nick,” and in 1844, he quietly included it in his own book.

Livingston’s family was not aware of the plagiarism until years later, after Henry Livingston Jr., died.

The question remains, why didn’t Livingston credit himself as the author originally? And, why did Moore slip the poem into his own work?

Linguistic Analysis

Professor Donald Foster used linguistic analysis to back up the claims for Livingston, and Professor MacDonald P. Jackson based his conclusions on statistical analysis. Jackson compared the writing styles of both Livingston and Moore and contrasted their rates of using common words and phoneme pairs, words that differ only by one sound.

In his book, Jackson wrote, “Their rates of use are largely beyond a writer’s conscious control. They distinguish Moore’s verse from Livingston’s, and they classify The Night Before Christmas with the latter.”

“For Moore to have written this poem, he would have had to slip into a style that was not only atypical of his own verse, but utterly typical of the very man who, according to his descendants, was the true author.”

Jackson also argued, “Moore was a dull, moralist, a pedagogue and satirist, who did not have the verve, imagination, humor, or whimsy of Livingston to write such a poem.”

The Case for Moore

The most obvious fact presented in the case for Moore’s authorship is that he stepped forward to take credit for the poem.

The Case for Livingston

The family of Major Henry Livingston, Jr., who died in 1828, claimed he was the real author of “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” though they had no physical evidence. It wasn’t until 1859, that the Livingston family discovered that Moore had taken credit for their father’s poem.
Four of Livingston’s children, as well as a neighboring girl, said they remembered being told this tale of St. Nicholas by Livingston as early as 1807. At that time it was claimed there existed a dated handwritten copy of the original poem, complete with revisions and scratch outs. Unfortunately, the house where this document was stored burned down.

“Fifteen years before the famous Christmas poem was published, Henry Livingston’s children heard their father recite it to the family as his own composition. His sons Charles, Sidney, and Edwin and their next door neighbor girl Eliza, all remembered Henry coming out from his writing den under the staircase and reading them that never-to-be-forgotten poem. But most of Henry’s poems, like Moore’s, have been forgotten. The most Henry ever did to identify his published pieces was to sign them with the occasional ‘R’.”

MacDonald P. Jackson spent his entire career analyzing authorship attribution. His book published in 2016, Who Wrote the Night Before Christmas, Analyzing the Clement Clarke Moore vs. Henry Livingston Question evaluates the opposing arguments. He uses the attribution techniques of modern computational stylistics as well as a statistical analysis of phonemes, and concludes that Livingston is the true author.
For almost a hundred years, experts have been arguing about the authorship of the famous Christmas poem, Twas The Night Before Christmas. Sadly, many of those opinions were lost in the archives of libraries. However, with access to historical archived newspapers online, it is now possible to rediscover those old arguments.

Henry’s great granddaughter Cornelia Griswold Goodrich, first tried to bring the family’s belief in Henry’s authorship to the public in 1886, but she failed for lack of direct evidence. The poems that Cornelia was able to show to Dutchess County historian, Benson Lossing did make him write back to her, “The circumstantial evidence that your G. G. Grandfather wrote “The Visit of St. Nicholas” seems as conclusive as that which has taken innocent men to the gallows.”

It wasn’t until 1899, that the family claim was heard publicly. Henry’s grandson, Henry Livingston of Babylon, New York, told his friend Simon W. Cooper the stories of his grandfather’s authorship, and Cooper made the claim public in a question he asked in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle Sun:

“Mr. Henry Livingston, editor of the South Side Signal of this place, claims that his grandfather, Henry Livingston, of Hyde Park-on-the-Hudson, and not Clement C. Moore, was the author of the poem, “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.” Mr. Livingston says his grandfather’s poem was originally printed in the Knickerbocker Magazine somewhere about 1800. Can you inform me if the claim of Mr. Moore to the authorship of the poem is well founded? BABYLON, December 27, 1899 SIMON W. COOPER.”

After the publication, Cornelia got in touch with her cousin Henry, who wrote back:
“My father, Sidney Montgomery Livingston as long ago as I can remember, claimed that his father Henry Livingston, Jr., was the author: that it was first read to the children at the old homestead below Poughkeepsie, when he was about eight years old, which would be about 1804 or 1805. He had the original manuscript, with many corrections in his possession, for a long time, and by him was given to his brother Edwin. Edwin’s person effects were destroyed when his sister Susan’s home was burned at Kaskaskia, Wisconsin, about 1847 or 1848.

Fundamental family facts from cousin Henry is that his father heard the poem recited a decade and a half before the poem was published in the Troy Sentinel, and that the original manuscript was seen by the family before it was lost. The letter reiterated the poem’s publication in the Knickerbocker Magazine.

Simon Cooper’s question remained unanswered, and it was another twenty-years, before the claim was given a full public airing in an article written in the Christian Science Monitor by Winthrop P. Tryon.

“To those who like the poems of their childhood well enough to care who wrote them, the seventy-ninth milestone on the Albany Post Road might conceivably be a goal of pilgrimage. For within view of the spot where it is located, lived Henry Livingston Junior, who, according to a tradition handed down through four generations of his descendants and unanimously held by those representing him today, was the author of the famous ballad beginning with the line “Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house.”

Things inherited through descendant lines were collected by William Sturgis Thomas, the grandson of Livingston’s daughter Jane. This included witness letters recounting memories passed on by Henry’s children, and a book of poems in a manuscript book in Henry’s handwriting. As Tryon described it:

“Important amongst this material is a manuscript book of about 45 poems, all of them short and the greater part of them humorous and playful, dating from 1784 to 1789. One-third of them are composed in pairs of anapestic verses, as is the ballad of “St. Nicholas.”

When “A Visit from St. Nicholas” was first published in the Troy Sentinel on December 23, 1823, the editor wrote about the poem: “There is, to our apprehension, a spirit of cordial goodness in it, a playfulness of fancy, and a benevolent alacrity to enter into the feelings and promote the simple pleasures of children, which are altogether charming.

Henry Noble MacCracken prior president of Vassar College wrote in his 1958 book, Blithe Dutchess: “The Visit from St. Nicholas is a little masterpiece of juvenile poetry. It is one of the best poems for children ever written. It begins and ends with children. Everything is designed in miniature. Mamma and papa are mere spectators. Mamma even disappears altogether after the first mention. But who cares? Papa is only a reporter of the sight, not a sharer. Children love motion, and the Visit is all motion. Papa flies to the window. The reindeer fly, too. So do the dry leaves. Santa Claus is all action, though no words.

The adjectives all suggest childhood. Snug, rosy, jolly, happy, quick, are all in the child’s world. So is the up and down, the on and away, of the reindeer. The tempo is that of the happy child, who must run to express his excitement.

It is this breathless quality that gives speed to the rhythm of the anapestic gallop. Only two images give even a hint of the adult point of view; the dry leaves blown aloft by the wild hurricane; and the midday luster of a clear moonlight in snow. Both are novel and net, but not beyond a child’s observation.

These four qualities, the childhood level of miniature, the motion of flying, the adjectives of joy, and the speed of action, are characteristic of Major Henry’s verse, and woefully lacking in Moore’s.

The anapaests of the Visit carry out these principles. The accented syllable is stressed, the lighter syllables either unaccented parts of words, or else minor parts of speech, prepositions, articles, copulatives, conjunctions, pronouns. It is literally impossible to read the poem slowly. It races on to its end, like the reindeer.

All the devices for giving speed and emphasis to those swift anapaests are simple and obvious. They consist of exclamations, but chiefly of repetitions, in which, as in music, force and speed accumulate without the useless obstruction of new thought. On, on, on; away, away, away; this is nursery bouncing, which every child loves.

Children love to learn exactly what folks wear, just how they look. Mamma and Papa are dressed; so is Santa. The detail of his pack and its unpacking satisfies child curiosity, who wants the fairy vision explained? Whoever wrote it loved his children, and knew how to enter their minds and feelings familiarly.”

Moore’s Writings

The attention Moore’s poetry garnered was negative. Don Foster, who wrote Author Unknown, describes the reaction of most of Moore’s contemporary critics ranging from sarcasm to tepid praise.

Moore’s later critics were not particularly kind. Tryon describes Moore’s book in his Christian Science Monitor piece: “In 1844, a book of poems was published by Moore, and the St. Nicholas ballad was included in the collection. All but two of the 44 pieces in this book are in iambic meter, and are studiously, elegantly, and seriously composed. They are more or less in a moralizing vein, and their style bears some resemblance to that of Whittier. They contain scarcely anything, however, except the ballad, to commend the author as a humorist.”

Famous writer of The New Yorker, James Thurber wrote: “Dr. Moore loved to write. His chief literary work is a ponderous book entitled “A Compendious Lexicon of the Hebrew Language.” He also liked to turn out pieces such as one called “Observations upon Certain Passages in Mr. Jefferson’s Note on the State of Virginia which Appear to have a Tendency to Subvert Religion and Establish a False Philosophy.” In 1836, he published a volume of verses. The best of the lot was “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.” There was only one other in the same metre (anapestic) and it was not so good.”

James Aldredge discusses Moore’s book in his 1968 article. “In writing his general style was as correct and sedate as the Hebrew-English dictionary which brought him fame during his lifetime. Could he have cut loose, for once, in those rollicking Christmas verses? His other poetry doesn’t seem to prove it. In character, it is too stiff and stilted – it lacks the gay spontaneity of even the major’s Henry Livingston’s rhymed letters.”

In Don Foster’s book, Author Unknown, he enumerates themes of Moore’s poems.
“The world, as represented in Professor Moore’s Poems, is a place inhabited by loud children, frivolous maids, scolding wives, loud children, lazy mechanics, loud children, soft-spoken rogues, rude barflies, lewd coquettes and prostitutes, rich men ill-clad, loud children, dull schoolmen, manly-treading female would-be-scholars, and loud children all of whom must be scolded: the little ones, with patience, and the adults, who ought to know better, with sneering sarcasm.”

Foster did not exaggerate. Poems by Clement C. Moore:

Old Santeclaus, 1821

Old SANTECLAUS with much delight
His reindeer drives this frosty night,
O’er chimney-tops, and tracks of snow,
To bring his yearly gifts to you.

The steady friend of virtuous youth,
The friend of duty, and of truth,
Each Christmas eve he joys to come
Where love and peace have made their home.

Through many houses he has been,
And various beds and stockings seen;
Some, white as snow, and neatly mended,
Others, that seemed for pigs intended.

Where e’er I found good girls or boys,
That hated quarrels, strife and noise,
I left an apple, or a tart,
Or wooden gun, or painted cart.

To some I gave a pretty doll,
To some a peg-top, or a ball;
No crackers, cannons, squibs, or rockets,
To blow their eyes up, or their pockets.
No drums to stun their Mother’s ear,
Nor swords to make their sisters fear;
But pretty books to store their mind
With knowledge of each various kind.

But where I found the children naughty,
In manners rude, in temper haughty,
Thankless to parents, liars, swearers,
Boxers, or cheats, or base tale-bearers,

I left a long, black, birchen rod,
Such as the dread command of God
Directs a Parent’s hand to use
When virtue’s path his sons refuse.

From Saint Nicholas, 1822

What! My sweet little Sis, in bed all alone;
No light in your room! And your nursy too gone!
And you, like a good child, are quietly lying,
While some naughty ones would be fretting or crying?
Well, for this you must have something pretty, my dear;
And, I hope, will deserve a reward too next year.
But, speaking of crying, I’m sorry to say
Your screeches and screams, so loud ev’ry day,
Were near driving me and my goodies away.

Good children I always give good things in plenty;
How sad to have left your stocking quite empty:
But you are beginning so nicely to spell,
And, in going to bed, behave always so well,
That, although I too oft see the tear in your eye,
I cannot resolve to pass you quite by.
I hope, when I come here again the next year,
I shall not see even the sign of a tear.
And then, if you get back your sweet pleasant looks,
And do as you’re bid, I will leave you some books,

Some toys or perhaps what you still may like better,
And then too may write you a prettier letter.
At present, my dear, I must bid you good-bye;
Now, do as you’re bid; and, remember, don’t cry.

From: Lines Written After A Snowstorm, Year Unknown

Come children dear, and look around;
Behold how soft and light
The silent snow had glad the ground
In robes of purest white.

The trees seem deck’d by fairy hand,
Nor need their native green;
And every breeze appears to stand,
All hush’d, to view the scene.

You wonder how the snows were made
That dance upon the air,
As if from purer worlds they stray’d,
So lightly and so fair.

Perhaps they are the summer flowers
In northern stars that bloom,
Wafted away from icy bowers
To cheer our winter’s gloom.

Perhaps they’re feathers of a race
Of birds that live away,
In some cold dreary wintry place,
Far from the sun’s warm ray.

And clouds, perhaps, are downy beds
On which the winds repose;
Who, when they rouse their slumb’ring heads,
Shake down the feath’ry snows.
But see, my darlings, while we stay
And gaze with fond delight,
The fairy scene soon fades away,
And mocks our raptur’d sight.

And let this fleeting vision teach
A truth you soon must know —
That all the joys we here can reach
Are transient as the snow.

Foster briefly summarizes Moore’s book. “The Night Before Christmas is as different from Moore’s other children’s verse as Christmas cookies from steamed spinach.”

Dutchess County historian, Helen Wilkinson Reynolds, noted the great difference in personality shown by the two sets of poems, “It may be permissible to say in passing that any person who becomes familiar with what is known definitely of Clement C. Moore and of Henry Livingston, Jr., will realize how completely different the two men were in mind and temperament and tastes. Dr. Moore was learned, measured, rather ponderous, and his writings do not indicate gayety of spirit and have no lightness of touch.”

In 1968, James Aldredge made the point that Henry’s style is completely consistent with that of the Christmas poem.

“And what a gay, sprightly image the major put forth with his pen! Time and again, when he would start writing a letter to relatives or friends, he would switch to poetry, and the result was that he would break out with some of the gayest, most rollicking verses ever written by an amateur.

Whatever conclusions one may wish to draw, it is plain as berries on a holly bush that Major Livingston dashed off nobody knows how many verses in the same rollicking vein. Anyone reading his gay letters in rhyme would have to concede it would have been no effort at all for him to have turned out the famous poem in question.”

Tristram Potter Coffin, a Professor specializing in folklore, was another believer in Henry’s authorship. In his 1973 book, The Illustrated Book of Christmas Folklore, Coffin concluded that Moore might not deserve the honor of author.

“The chances are excellent the honor should go to a sometime major in the Revolution, land surveyor, and “renaissance man” from Dutchess County, Henry Livingston, Jr. (1748-1828).

The truth probably is that Moore heard verses about a visit from St. Nicholas somehow, somewhere, perhaps from the “Dutch gardener,” perhaps from a governess or guest who visited the Livingston family. Moore probably reworked the verses, possibly adding enough that he came to think of them as his own. Certainly, Livingston makes a better father for this prose than Moore.

Moore was a learned, ponderous man, “educated for the church,” with a limited penchant for gaiety. Livingston was a whimsical person who once switched the lyrics in his music book from “God Save the King” to “God Save Congress” and who produced a steady stream of light, occasional verse, much of it in the same meter as “The Night Before …”

However, Coffin may be giving Moore an unearned presumption of innocence. What Moore published in 1844, was based on the editing of many, many other people, it seems unlikely that an actual author would be so generous as to incorporate so many people’s suggestions into the original 1823, variant.

Don Foster quote: “Fun stuff, fun poetry. You can’t read Major Henry Livingston Jr. and not love the man from the top of his jolly head to the tips of his Poughkeepsie feet. His correspondence and published poems and articles are usually witty, sometimes hilarious, never sarcastic; full of love for humanity and driven by an irrepressible joie de vivre, or to say it more properly in Dutch, levenslust.”

How the Poem Could Have Traveled

Another thread that seems to recur is to excerpt part of Mary Goodrich Montgomery’s letter describing the story that came down her family line about how the poem got from the Livingston family to the Moore’s family.

A governess visiting the Livingston family makes a copy of the poem and takes it with her when she goes to work for a Moore family down south. On the way, she stops off in New York, and leaves a copy of the poem with Clement Moore.

A Moore family “down south” did need a governess in this period. Henry’s first cousin, Judith Newcomb Livingston, also lived next door to Henry. She married John Moore, the brother of Clement Moore’s uncle. Judith and John’s daughter Lydia had married Rev. William Henry Hart. From 1816-1829, Lydia and William’s children were born in Richmond Hill, Virginia.

Moore’s own children were born from 1815-1826; therefore, a governess for Moore’s own children could also have brought the poem from Poughkeepsie between 1815 and 1822.

This was first done by Stevenson, and later writers followed his lead. Stevenson quoted Mary as saying: “The little incident connected with the first reading of the “Visit of St. Nicholas” was related to me by my grandmother, Catharine Walker Griswold, who was a daughter of Catharine Breese, the eldest daughter of Henry Livingston. As I recollect her story, there was a young lady spending the Christmas holidays with the family at “Locust Grove” on Christmas morning. Mr. Livingston came into the dining room, where his family and their guests were just sitting down to breakfast. He held the manuscript in his hand, and said that it was a Christmas poem he had written for them. He then sat down at table, unfolded the manuscript, and read aloud to them The Visit of St. Nicholas.

All were delighted with the verses, and the guest, in particular, was so much impressed by them that she begged Mr. Livingston to let her have a copy of the poem. He consented, and made a copy in his own hand, which he gave to her. On leaving Locust Grove, when her visit came to an end, this young lady went directly to the home of Mr. Clement C. Moore, where she filled the position of Governess to his children.”

Stevenson then explained away the family story as untrue because Moore at the time was unmarried and would have had no need for a governess. Following authors pick this up. But Stevenson had stopped quoting Mary early. Mary went on to say:

“There are two further details, which I think were a part of the story, although I am not so sure of my recollection of them as of the above main facts. One is that the young lady was either a Canadian or an English woman (I am inclined to think the former) and that other is that, on leaving Locust Grove, she went to join Mr. Moore’s family in one of the Southern states.”

Having a connection to both families traveling south to act as a governess in a Moore-connected household is a possibility. Henry Livingston’s first cousin and next door neighbor was Judith Livingston, who was married to John Moore, the brother of Clement Moore’s uncle. In 1815, their daughter Lydia was married to a student of Moore’s, Rev. William Henry Hart, and the couple moved to Virginia. Since Henry’s next door neighbor Elizabeth (Eliza) Clement Brewer, heard Henry recite the poem when she and her husband-to-be, Charles Livingston, were children, it’s also possible that another next door neighbor, a child, of the Moore’s family, heard it as well.

The Moore connection stayed strong with the family, with Lydia and William’s daughter Frances Livingston Hart marrying the son of another student of Moore’s, Rev. Clement Moore Butler, the son of Rev. David Butler. The funds for Rev. Butler’s St. Paul’s church in Troy had come from Rev. Benjamin Moore’s Trinity Church. Clement Butler was also the brother of Harriet Butler, who is known for taking the Christmas poem to the Troy Sentinel.

Other Ways for the Poem to Have Traveled

Helen Meyers had her own theory that Clement Moore’s and Henry Livingston might well be acquainted through a local gentleman, William Bard. Bard lived in Hyde Park, which is just north of Poughkeepsie, and Moore’s father officiated at Bard’s wedding. Bard was a friend of Moore’s and one of Bard’s poems appears in Moore’s 1844 book. Meyers notes:

“That firmly places Moore in this Poughkeepsie area, so it seems more than probable that he met Livingston at some of the many Hudson valley parties, which Livingston described so vividly in a rhymed letter to his brother Beekman”

The Reindeer Caper

The sky, in Major Livingston’s imagination is a busy place. As in “A Visit,” where reindeer like dry leaves “mount to the sky,” Livingston writes of children and souls and storms and even lambkins who mount “to the sky,” or “to the skies,” [also to the skies] or “to the bright empire of the sky”; of Oberon, King of the Fairies, whose carriage is a nutshell pulled by a team of katydids; of a handsome white-stocking’d colt who “moves as if he danced on air.” In Major Henry’s verse and prose, whales gambol above the waves, boats fly, angels hover, kittens bound, gnats flit, dancers float. Even his dinosaurs can mount to the sky. When the bones of a “gigantic quadruped” were discovered in Ulster County’s Little Britain in 1783, the locals were awestruck by the majesty of the dinosaur.

In a short story for the New York Magazine, Livingston imagines one of these ancient monsters hiding out in the American wilderness, devouring men, flattening villages, ascending to the bluest summit, and leaping over the waves of the west at a bound.

“Major Livingston’s interests extended beyond paleontology and aeronautics, and as Dutchess County’s local expert on the Arctic, Livingston wrote of northern cultures around the world. From Labrador to Norway, and from to Russia to Siberia, borrowing everywhere from accounts of Scandinavian elves, Lapland reindeers, and of the Norse god, Thor, whose chariot was said to have been pulled by airborne “He-Goats. By combining the pipe-smoking Dutchmen of the Hudson Valley with the reindeer of Lapland and the flying goats of Norwegian mythology, our Christmas poet created an American original. Santa has traveled by reindeer-drawn sleigh ever since.”

If Livingston’s poem reached the Moore household before Moore read the poem to his children in 1822, possibly the poem reached the Moore household even earlier and in time to inspire Moore’s 1821 “Old Santeclaus.”

Who actually wrote Twas The Night Before Christmas?

Come to your own conclusions, but before you do there is a myriad of information on the Livingston website, and many of the poems written by both men and details of their lives can be found there.

https://www.henrylivingston.com/