Clement Clarke Moore

Clement Clarke Moore
Born	July 15, 1779(1779-07-15) New York City
Died	July 10, 1863 (aged 83) Newport, Rhode Island

Clement Clarke Moore (July 15, 1779 – July 10, 1863) is the credited author rewritten of A Visit from St. Nicholas (more commonly known today as Twas the Night Before Christmas).

Clement Clarke Moore was most famous in his own day as a professor of Oriental and Greek literature at Columbia College (now Columbia University). At General Theological Seminary he compiled a two volume Hebrew dictionary.

He was the only son of Benjamin Moore, a president of Columbia College and bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, and his wife Charity Clarke.^[1] Clement Clarke Moore was a graduate of Columbia College (1798), where he earned both his B.A. and his M.A.. He was made professor of Biblical learning in the General Theological Seminary in New York (1821), a post that he held until 1850. The ground on which the seminary now stands was his gift.^[2]

From 1840 to 1850, he was a board member of The New York Institution for the Blind at 34th Street and 9th Avenue (now The New York Institute for Special Education). He compiled a Hebrew and English Lexicon (1809), and published a collection of poems (1844). Upon his death in 1863 at his summer residence in Newport, Rhode Island, his funeral was held in Trinity Church, Newport, where he had owned a pew. Then his body was interred in the cemetery at St. Luke's Episcopal Church on Hudson St., in New York City. On November 29, 1899, his body was reinterred in Trinity Churchyard Cemetery in New York.

Clement Clarke Moore Park

Clement Clarke Moore Park

The Moore house, Chelsea, at the time a country estate, gave its name to the surrounding neighborhood of Chelsea, Manhattan, and Moore's land in the area is noted today by Clement Clarke Moore Park, located at 10th Avenue and 22nd Street. The playground there opened November 22, 1968, and it was named in memory of Clement Clarke Moore by local law during the following year. The 1995 renovations to Clement Clarke Moore Park included a new perimeter fence, modular play equipment, safety surfacing, pavements and transplanted trees. This park is a well-liked and in-demand playground area used daily by local residents, who also gather there on the last Sunday of Advent for a reading of Twas the Night Before Christmas.^[3]

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.

Family

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.

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.

The Moore children have several living descendants including members of the Ogden family. In 1855, one of Clement's daughters, Mary C. Moore Ogden painted "illuminations" to go with her father's celebrated verse.

Slavery

Moore opposed abolition of slavery, and owned several slaves during his lifetime. See: The Poet of Christmas Eve: A Life of Clement Clarke Moore, 1779-1863, by Samuel W. Patterson (New York: Morehouse-Gorman Co, 1956)

Publications

• Stedman, An American Anthology (Boston, 1900).
• Observations upon Certain Passages in Mr. [Thomas] Jefferson's Notes on Virginia which Appear to have a Tendency to Subvert Religion, and Establish A False Philosophy (New York, 1804).
• A Visit From Saint Nicholas. Troy: New York Sentinel on December 23, The original publisher hinted at Moore’s authorship, though without naming him, in 1829, and Moore was first credited as author by Charles Fenno Hoffman, ed. The New-York Book of Poetry. New York: George Dearborn, 1837.
• Nickell, Joe. “The Case of the Christmas Poem.” Manuscripts, Fall 2002, 54;4:293-308, and Part 2.” Manuscripts, Winter 2003, 55;1:5-15.
• Nissenbaum, Stephen. The Battle for Christmas: A Cultural History of America’s Most Cherished Holiday. New York: Vintage, 1996.
• Kaller, Seth T. “The Moore Things Change…,” in The New-York Journal of American History, Fall 2004).

Sources

Rev. John Moore of Newtown, Long Island and some of his Descendants, Compiled by James W. Moore, Lafayette College. Chemical Publishing Company, Easton Pennsylvania. MCMIII. (1903). p. 107. Reprints of this out-of-print book are available via Higginson book company.

• Foster, Donald (2000). Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous. New York: Henry Holt. ISBN 0-8050-6357-9. 
• Nissenbaum, Stephen (1997). The Battle for Christmas: A Social and Cultural History of Christmas that Shows How It Was Transformed from an Unruly Carnival Season into the Quintessential American Family Holiday. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-679-41223-9. 

References

External links

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Clement Clarke Moore

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Clement Clarke Moore

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Clement Clarke Moore

• A Visit from Saint Nicholas, courtesy of Poets.org
• Peter Christoph, "Clement Moore revisited", 1982
• Biography of Moore at University of Toronto's Representative Poetry Online.
• Urban Legends - Clement Clarke Moore: The Reluctant Mythmaker
• Free audiobook of Twas the Night Before Christmas from LibriVox
• Works by Clement Clarke Moore at Project Gutenberg
• This article incorporates text from an edition of the New International Encyclopedia that is in the public domain.