Henry Livingston Jr.

The famous Christmas poem first appeared in the Troy Sentinel on December 23, 1823. Many sources indicate that the poem was sent to the newspaper by a friend of Clement Clarke Moore, and the person giving the poem to the newspaper, without Moore's knowledge, certainly believed the poem had been written by Moore.[5][6] However, several of Livingston's children remembered their father reading that very same poem to them fifteen years earlier.

As early as 1837, Charles Fenno Hoffman, a friend of Moore's, put Moore's name on the poem.[7] For decades, Moore refused to deny or confirm authorship of the poem, but he did take credit for it years later, in 1844, in his book "Poems", an anthology of his works. [6] At multiple times in his later life, Moore wrote out the poem in longhand for his friends.

Because the poem was first published anonymously, various editions were for many years published both with and without attribution. As a result, it was only in 1859, 36 years after the poem first appeared in print, that Henry's family discovered that Moore was taking credit for what they believed to be their father's poem. That belief went back many years. Around 1807, Henry's sons Charles and Edwin, as well as their neighbor Eliza (who would later marry Charles) remembered their father's reading the poem to them as his own.[8] Following their father's death in 1828, Charles claimed to have found a newspaper copy of the poem in his father's desk, and son Sidney claimed to have found the original handwritten copy of the poem with its original crossouts.

The handwritten copy of the poem was passed from Sidney, on his death, to his brother Edwin. However, the same year that the family discovered Moore's claim of authorship, Edwin claimed to have lost the original manuscript in a house fire in Wisconsin, where he was living with his sister Susan.[9][10]

By 1879, five separate lines of Henry's descendants had to correspond among themselves, trying to compare their family stories in the hope that someone had some proof that could be brought forward, but there was no documentation beyond family stories. In 1899, even without proof, Sidney's grandson published the first public claim of Henry's authorship in his own newspaper on Long Island. The claim drew little attention.[11]

In 1920, Henry's great grandson, William Sturgis Thomas became interested in the family stories and began to collect the memories and papers of existing descendants, eventually publishing his research in the issue of the Duchess County Historical Society yearbook. Thomas provided this material to Winthrop P. Tryon for his article on the subject in the Christian Science Monitor on August 4, 1920.[9]

Later, Moore descendants arranged to have an elderly family connection, Maria Jephson O'Conor, depose about her memories of Moore's claim of authorship.[12] Livingston himself never claimed authorship, [13] nor has any record ever been found of any printing of the poem with Livingston’s name attached to it.

In 2000 on independent grounds, Donald Wayne Foster, Professor of English at Vassar College, argued in his book "Author Unknown", that Livingston is a more likely candidate for authorship than Moore.[8][14] In response to Foster's claim, Stephen Nissenbaum, professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, wrote in 2001 that based on his research, Moore was the author.[15] In his article, "There Arose Such a Clatter Who Really Wrote 'The Night before Christmas'? (And Why Does It Matter?)", Nissenbaum confirmed Moore's authorship, "I believe he did, and I think I have marshaled an array of good evidence to prove [it]".[16]

Foster's claim has also been countered by document dealer and historian Seth Kaller, who once owned one of Moore's original manuscripts of the poem. Kaller has offered a point-by-point rebuttal of both Foster's linguistic analysis and external findings, buttressed by the work of autograph expert James Lowe and Dr. Joe Nickell, author of Pen, Ink and Evidence.[17][18][19]

MacDonald P. Jackson, Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Auckland, New Zealand and a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, has spent his entire academic career analyzing authorship attribution. In his 2016 book Who Wrote "the Night Before Christmas"?: Analyzing the Clement Clarke Moore Vs. Henry Livingston Question,[20] he evaluates the opposing arguments as the first analyst to employ the author-attribution techniques of modern computational stylistics. Jackson employs a range of tests to analyze the poetry of both men and introduces a new test, statistical analysis of phonemes; he concludes that Livingston is the true author of the classic work. His conclusion: "Every test, so far applied, associates 'The Night Before Christmas' much more closely with Livingston's verse than with Moore's."

Through his eldest daughter Catherine, he was the grandfather of U.S. Senator from Illinois Sidney Breese (1800–1878) and Rear Admiral Samuel Livingston Breese (1794–1870), who served in the War of 1812, the Mexican–American War, and the American Civil War.[24]