Clement Clarke Moore
Encyclopedia
Clement Clarke Moore was an American professor
of Oriental and Greek literature
at Columbia College
, now Columbia University
. He donated land from his family estate for the foundation of the General Theological Seminary
, where he was a professor of Biblical learning and compiled a two-volume Hebrew dictionary. He is generally considered to be the author of the yuletide poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas
", which later became famous as "T'was the Night Before Christmas".
and Charity Clarke and grew up in the family residence in Elmhurst, Queens. Clement Clarke Moore was a graduate of Columbia College (1798), where he earned both his B.A.
and his M.A.
.
In 1820, Moore helped Trinity Church organize a new parish church, St. Lukes in the Fields, on Hudson Street
, and the following year he was made professor of Biblical learning at the General Theological Seminary
in New York, a post that he held until 1850. The ground on which the seminary now stands was his gift.
From 1840 to 1850, he was a board member of the New York Institution for the Blind at 34th Street
and Ninth Avenue
, which is 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 in the Fields. On November 29, 1899, his body was reinterred in Trinity Churchyard Cemetery in New York.
Moore opposed the abolition
of slavery
, and owned several slaves during his lifetime.
. Clarke named his house for a hospital in London
that served war veterans. The estate was later inherited by Thomas Clarke's daughter, Charity Clarke Moore, and ultimately by grandson Clement and his family.
When New York City laid down the street grid called for in the Commissioner's Plan of 1811, the new Ninth Avenue
went through the middle of the estate, causing Moore to write and publish a pamphlet which called on other "Proprietors of Real Estate" to fight the continued development of the city, which he saw as a conspiracy designed to increase political patronage and appease the city's working class. He also decried having to pay taxes for public works such as creating new streets, which he called "a tyranny no monarch in Europe would dare to exercise."
Despite his protests against urban development, eventually Moore began to develop Chelsea, dividing it up into lots along Ninth Avenue and selling them to well-heeled New Yorkers. He also donated to the Episcopal diocese an apple orchard consisting of 66 tracts for use as a seminary, construction on which began in 1827. This became the General Theological Seminary
, where Moore served as the first professor of Oriental Languages, and which still survives on the same site, taking up most of the block between 20th and 21st Streets and Ninth and Tenth
Avenues. Ten years later, Moore also gave land on Ninth and 20th Street, east of the avenue, for St. Peter's Episcopal Church
.
Today, the Manhattan neighborhood which emerged from Moore's ancestral estate is still called Chelsea
.
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.
, Sentinel on December 23, 1823, and was reprinted frequently thereafter with no name attached. Moore later acknowledged authorship and the poem was included in an 1844 anthology
of his works at the insistence of his children, for whom he wrote it.
A Visit from St. Nicholas is largely responsible for the conception of Santa Claus
from the mid-nineteenth century to today, including his physical appearance, the night of his visit, his mode of transportation, the number and names of his reindeer, and the tradition that he brings toys to children. Prior to the poem, American ideas about St. Nicholas and other Christmastide visitors varied considerably. The poem has influenced ideas about St. Nicholas and Santa Claus beyond the United States to the rest of the English-speaking world
and beyond.
Moore's connection with the poem has been questioned by Professor Donald Foster, an expert on textual content analysis
, who used external and internal evidence to argue that Moore could not have been the author. Major Henry Livingston, Jr.
, a New Yorker
with Dutch
and Scottish
roots, is considered the chief candidate for authorship, if Moore did not write it. Livingston was distantly related to Moore's wife.
Clement Clarke Moore Park, located at 10th Avenue and 22nd Street, is named after Moore. The playground there opened November 22, 1968, and it was named in memory of Clement Clarke Moore by local law 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.
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...
of Oriental and Greek literature
Greek literature
Greek literature refers to writings composed in areas of Greek influence, typically though not necessarily in one of the Greek dialects, throughout the whole period in which the Greek-speaking people have existed.-Ancient Greek literature :...
at Columbia College
Columbia College of Columbia University
Columbia College is the oldest undergraduate college at Columbia University, situated on the university's main campus in Morningside Heights in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1754 by the Church of England as King's College, receiving a Royal Charter from King George II...
, now Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
. He donated land from his family estate for the foundation of the General Theological Seminary
General Theological Seminary
The General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church is a seminary of the Episcopal Church in the United States and is located in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan in New York....
, where he was a professor of Biblical learning and compiled a two-volume Hebrew dictionary. He is generally considered to be the author of the yuletide poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas
A Visit from St. Nicholas
"A Visit from St. Nicholas", also known as "The Night Before Christmas" and "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" from its first line, is a poem first published anonymously in 1823 and generally attributed to Clement Clarke Moore, although the claim has also been made that it was written by Henry...
", which later became famous as "T'was the Night Before Christmas".
Life and career
He was born on July 15, 1779, to Benjamin MooreBenjamin Moore
Benjamin Moore was the second Episcopal bishop of New York.-Early life and family:Moore was born in Newtown, New York, in 1748, the son of Samuel Moore and Sarah Fish Moore and the great-grandson of John Moore, the first Independent minister allowed in New England...
and Charity Clarke and grew up in the family residence in Elmhurst, Queens. Clement Clarke Moore was a graduate of Columbia College (1798), where he earned both his B.A.
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
and his M.A.
Master's degree
A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...
.
In 1820, Moore helped Trinity Church organize a new parish church, St. Lukes in the Fields, on Hudson Street
Hudson Street (Manhattan)
Hudson Street is a north/south oriented street in the New York City borough of Manhattan. Running from TriBeCa to Greenwich Village and through Hudson Square, Hudson Street has two distinct one-way traffic patterns that meet at Abingdon Square, at the street's intersection with Eighth Avenue and...
, and the following year he was made professor of Biblical learning at the General Theological Seminary
General Theological Seminary
The General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church is a seminary of the Episcopal Church in the United States and is located in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan in New York....
in New York, a post that he held until 1850. The ground on which the seminary now stands was his gift.
From 1840 to 1850, he was a board member of the New York Institution for the Blind at 34th Street
34th Street (Manhattan)
34th Street is a major cross-town street in the New York City borough of Manhattan, connecting the Lincoln Tunnel and Queens-Midtown Tunnel. Like many of New York City's major crosstown streets, it has its own bus routes and four subway stops serving the trains at Eighth Avenue, the trains at...
and Ninth Avenue
Ninth Avenue (Manhattan)
Ninth Avenue / Columbus Avenue is a southbound thoroughfare on the West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Traffic runs downtown along its full length...
, which is now the New York Institute for Special Education. He compiled a Hebrew and English Lexicon (1809), and published a collection of poems
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
(1844). Upon his death in 1863 at his summer residence in Newport, Rhode Island
Newport, Rhode Island
Newport is a city on Aquidneck Island in Newport County, Rhode Island, United States, about south of Providence. Known as a New England summer resort and for the famous Newport Mansions, it is the home of Salve Regina University and Naval Station Newport which houses the United States Naval War...
, his funeral was held in Trinity Church, Newport
Trinity Church (Newport, Rhode Island)
Trinity Church, on Queen Anne Square in Newport, Rhode Island, is a historic parish church in the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island. Founded in 1698, it is the oldest Episcopal parish in the state. The current Georgian building was designed by architect Richard Munday and constructed in...
, where he had owned a pew. Then his body was interred in the cemetery at St. Luke in the Fields. On November 29, 1899, his body was reinterred in Trinity Churchyard Cemetery in New York.
Moore opposed the abolition
Abolitionism
Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery.In western Europe and the Americas abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and set slaves free. At the behest of Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas who was shocked at the treatment of natives in the New World, Spain enacted the first...
of slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
, and owned several slaves during his lifetime.
Chelsea
Moore's estate, Chelsea, was on the west side of Manhattan island above Houston Street, where the developed city ended at the time, and was mostly open countryside. It was once the property of Maj. Thomas Clarke, Clement's maternal grandfather and a retired British veteran of the French and Indian WarFrench and Indian War
The French and Indian War is the common American name for the war between Great Britain and France in North America from 1754 to 1763. In 1756, the war erupted into the world-wide conflict known as the Seven Years' War and thus came to be regarded as the North American theater of that war...
. Clarke named his house for a hospital in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
that served war veterans. The estate was later inherited by Thomas Clarke's daughter, Charity Clarke Moore, and ultimately by grandson Clement and his family.
When New York City laid down the street grid called for in the Commissioner's Plan of 1811, the new Ninth Avenue
Ninth Avenue (Manhattan)
Ninth Avenue / Columbus Avenue is a southbound thoroughfare on the West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Traffic runs downtown along its full length...
went through the middle of the estate, causing Moore to write and publish a pamphlet which called on other "Proprietors of Real Estate" to fight the continued development of the city, which he saw as a conspiracy designed to increase political patronage and appease the city's working class. He also decried having to pay taxes for public works such as creating new streets, which he called "a tyranny no monarch in Europe would dare to exercise."
Despite his protests against urban development, eventually Moore began to develop Chelsea, dividing it up into lots along Ninth Avenue and selling them to well-heeled New Yorkers. He also donated to the Episcopal diocese an apple orchard consisting of 66 tracts for use as a seminary, construction on which began in 1827. This became the General Theological Seminary
General Theological Seminary
The General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church is a seminary of the Episcopal Church in the United States and is located in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan in New York....
, where Moore served as the first professor of Oriental Languages, and which still survives on the same site, taking up most of the block between 20th and 21st Streets and Ninth and Tenth
Tenth Avenue (Manhattan)
Tenth Avenue, known as Amsterdam Avenue north of 59th Street, is a north-south thoroughfare on the West Side of Manhattan in New York City. It carries uptown traffic as far as West 110th Street, also known as Cathedral Parkway for the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine...
Avenues. Ten years later, Moore also gave land on Ninth and 20th Street, east of the avenue, for St. Peter's Episcopal Church
St. Peter's Episcopal Church (Manhattan)
St. Peter's Episcopal Church, an historic church at 346 West 20th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, began as an outgrowth from the nearby General Theological Seminary, which had been founded in 1827...
.
Today, the Manhattan neighborhood which emerged from Moore's ancestral estate is still called Chelsea
Chelsea, Manhattan
Chelsea is a neighborhood on the West Side of the borough of Manhattan in New York City. The district's boundaries are roughly 14th Street to the south, 30th Street to the north, the western boundary of the Ladies' Mile Historic District – which lies between the Avenue of the Americas and...
.
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
Hudson Valley
The Hudson Valley comprises the valley of the Hudson River and its adjacent communities in New York State, United States, from northern Westchester County northward to the cities of Albany and Troy.-History:...
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.
A Visit from St. Nicholas
The poem, "arguably the best-known verses ever written by an American", was first published anonymously in the Troy, New YorkTroy, New York
Troy is a city in the US State of New York and the seat of Rensselaer County. Troy is located on the western edge of Rensselaer County and on the eastern bank of the Hudson River. Troy has close ties to the nearby cities of Albany and Schenectady, forming a region popularly called the Capital...
, Sentinel on December 23, 1823, and was reprinted frequently thereafter with no name attached. Moore later acknowledged authorship and the poem was included in an 1844 anthology
Anthology
An anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler. It may be a collection of poems, short stories, plays, songs, or excerpts...
of his works at the insistence of his children, for whom he wrote it.
A Visit from St. Nicholas is largely responsible for the conception of Santa Claus
Santa Claus
Santa Claus is a folklore figure in various cultures who distributes gifts to children, normally on Christmas Eve. Each name is a variation of Saint Nicholas, but refers to Santa Claus...
from the mid-nineteenth century to today, including his physical appearance, the night of his visit, his mode of transportation, the number and names of his reindeer, and the tradition that he brings toys to children. Prior to the poem, American ideas about St. Nicholas and other Christmastide visitors varied considerably. The poem has influenced ideas about St. Nicholas and Santa Claus beyond the United States to the rest of the English-speaking world
English-speaking world
The English-speaking world consists of those countries or regions that use the English language to one degree or another. For more information, please see:Lists:* List of countries by English-speaking population...
and beyond.
Moore's connection with the poem has been questioned by Professor Donald Foster, an expert on textual content analysis
Content analysis
Content analysis or textual analysis is a methodology in the social sciences for studying the content of communication. Earl Babbie defines it as "the study of recorded human communications, such as books, websites, paintings and laws."According to Dr...
, who used external and internal evidence to argue that Moore could not have been the author. Major Henry Livingston, Jr.
Henry Livingston, Jr.
Henry Livingston, Jr. may have written the poem known as "A Visit from St. Nicholas", although more popularly as "The Night Before Christmas", which is generally attributed to Clement Clarke Moore....
, a New Yorker
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
with Dutch
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
and Scottish
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
roots, is considered the chief candidate for authorship, if Moore did not write it. Livingston was distantly related to Moore's wife.
Clement Clarke Moore Park
Advent
Advent is a season observed in many Western Christian churches, a time of expectant waiting and preparation for the celebration of the Nativity of Jesus at Christmas. It is the beginning of the Western liturgical year and commences on Advent Sunday, called Levavi...
for a reading of Twas the Night Before Christmas.
External links
- A Visit from Saint Nicholas on Poets.org
- Peter Christoph, "Clement Moore revisited", 1982
- The Night Before Christmas Bibliography by Nancy H. Marshall
- 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
- Clement Clark Moore on Findagrave