Attributions of "A Visit from St. Nicholas" to deceased portrait artist Joseph Wood and the late Rev. John W. Curtis
Two posthumous claims, both of them wrong, issued during the lifetime of Clement C. Moore
Henry Livingston, Jr. was not the first man to get mistaken, posthumous credit for writing “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” the holiday classic that unforgettably begins, “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas….” Or the second. Long before any public effort to rebrand the randy and multi-talented Major Livingston of Poughkeepsie as true author of “The Night Before Christmas,” a friend of the brilliant, dissipated, and long-since deceased artist Joseph Wood claimed he wrote it, in a letter to the editor of the Washington National Intelligencer dated December 22, 1843 and published on Christmas Day—along with the poem, as requested:
GENTLEMEN: The enclosed lines were written by JOSEPH WOOD, artist, for the National Intelligencer, and published in that paper in 1827 or 1828, as you may perceive from your files. By republishing them as the composition of Mr. WOOD you will gratify one who now has few sources of pleasure left. Perhaps you may comply with this request, if it be only for “auld lange syne.”
Joseph Wood—a farmer’s son, born July 6, 1778 near Clarkstown in Rockland County, New York—had passed away many years before in Washington, D. C., then called Washington City.1 Wood ran off to seek his fortune in New York City where, still in his early thirties, he won glowing praise for his “genius and industry” in a published sketch of his journey as a struggling miniature painter by James Kirke Paulding.2 William Dunlap recollected the highs and lows of Wood’s brief, lucrative partnership with John Wesley Jarvis, back when the two “occupied rooms in Park-row, between the theatre and Beekman-street”:
These were piping times-and what with Jarvis’s humour, Wood’s fiddling and fluting—and the painting executed by each, they had a busy and merry time of it. But I fear “merry and wise,” was never the maxim which guided either.
The artists indulged in the excitements, and experienced the perplexities of mysterious marriages; and it is probable that these perplexities kept both poor, and confined them to the society of young men, instead of that respectable communion with ladies, and the refined circles of the city, which Malbone enjoyed: and I have reason to think, that these mysteries and perplexities caused the dissolution of the partnership of Jarvis and Wood on no friendly terms. 3
In the 21st century, Elle Shushan has reported that “President James Madison, Eli Whitney, De Witt Clinton, Commodore James Biddle, Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, General Andrew Jackson, and Francis Scott Key all sat” for portraits by Joseph Wood.4 Dale T. Johnson (cited by Sushan) records the sad fact that Wood’s “notoriously dissolute life” inspired a temperance tract, published a few years after his death.5
I have not yet read the 1834 tract. Allusions to Wood’s alcoholism and consequent ruin are plain enough in the earlier “obituary sketch” that appeared in the National Intelligencer the day after Wood’s death. One repeated theme of the 1830 “sketch” concerns the bad influence of so-called “friends”:
But alas! the indiscretions of maturer age, brought on by improper associations, embittered his latter days. Where were those pretended friends—his companions of conviviality, who soothed his follies, palliated his errors, and encouraged him to excess? They vanished, and left their half-murdered victim to the kindness of other friends; and, for aught they cared, to expire neglected and forgotten! …
… Ingenuous, high-minded, and honorable, but for ‘friends,’ what a harvest of wealth might not JOSEPH WOOD have reaped! but shall they be termed friends who courted his company in prosperity and deserted him in the dark hour of adversity? They were the vilest enemies, who administered the poisoned chalice to his lips, and made him the premature victim of their own deleterious habits.
Thirteen years after the death of Joseph Wood, only a true friend, surely, would have troubled to exalt his name in any forum, for any reason.
One reader of the National Intelligencer, claiming only a “passing acquaintance” with the gifted artist, was moved after seeing Wood’s name attached to “A Visit from St. Nicholas” on Christmas Day to commend both the poem and the painter:
[COMMUNICATED.]
I noticed in the National Intelligencer of the 25th instant an allusion, by some correspondent, to the late Mr. JOSEPH WOOD of this city, and introducing a very ingenious poetic piece entitled “a visit from St. Nicholas”—a piece, too, evincing a brilliancy approaching very near to grandeur.
I advert to this gentleman with sentiments of regret—a passing acquaintance with whom in 1825 having made me sensible of the wonderful power of his pencil. I am no judge of the arts, scientifically; but one may, nevertheless, be conscious of their spirit, as it exhibits itself in the classic sweetness of the female mouth, and the repose of heroic virtue.
At that time I made two very short calls on Mr. WOOD, with an acquaintance of mine; and although an entire stranger, he took, on my second visit, in the course of ten minutes, and wholly without any apprehension of the kind on my part, a likeness of myself, about six inches by four, which has been pronounced by all who have seen it a marvellous exhibition of genius. Verily, the eternal mind is abroad among men, and He will convert them to goodness by the exhibitions of his moral beauty.
GRATITUDE AND ADMIRATION.
However sincere and heartfelt, the 1843 attribution to Wood was mistaken on several counts. “A Visit from St. Nicholas” first appeared anonymously on December 23, 1823 in the Troy Sentinel, not the National Intelligencer or any Washington City newspaper. The poem had never been represented there or anywhere as an original contribution by Joseph Wood. Indeed, in 1837 the National Intelligencer had reprinted “A Visit from St. Nicholas” under Moore’s name, as had numerous U. S. newspapers after its appearance in the New-York Book of Poetry with three other poems, all four properly credited to Clement C. Moore. On January 2, 1826 the Christmas poem had been reprinted anonymously in the National Intelligencer from another southern newspaper, the Charleston Mercury.
Orville Holley, editor of the Troy Sentinel, learned who wrote the delightful rhymes about St. Nicholas soon after he abetted their mysterious debut.6 And said so in print, allusively describing Clement C. Moore in 1829 while punning, in italics for emphasis, on his surname:
"We have been given to understand that the author of them belongs by birth and residence to the city of New York, and that he is a gentleman of more merit as a scholar and a writer than many of more noisy pretensions."7
Besides the New-York Book of Poetry, two different 1840 anthologies had also identified Moore as the author of “A Visit from St. Nicholas.” One was the collection of Specimens from the American Poets (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1840) edited by William Cullen Bryant. Another was John Keese’s edition of the Poets of America (New York: S. Colman, 1840). The latter anthology by Keese was specifically acknowledged in the correction that appeared in the Daily National Intelligencer on December 28, 1843, three days after the errant claim for Wood in the same newspaper:
Messrs. EDITORS: I perceive in your paper of the 25th instant that an extract from the beautiful little poem entitled "A Visit from St. Nicholas" is given to the pen of Jos. Wood. This is a mistake. It is well known to be the production of CLEMENT C. MOORE, of the city of New York, and is published as his in the volume of American Poems edited by John Keese.
Very respectfully, &c.
C.
In Manhattan, Clement C. Moore was still teaching Hebrew at General Theological Seminary, still serving as clerk for the Board of Trustees at Columbia University, taking down the minutes of every board meeting with gorgeous clarity, still enlisted as a Manager (one of twenty) of the New York Institution for the Blind, and still making occasional verses for a family circle that no longer included the living forms of his wife Eliza and their daughter Charity. Both loved ones had passed in 1830. Charity Elizabeth (born September 11, 1816) was the younger of two daughters for whom Moore had specially composed two poems of winter wonder, “A Visit from St. Nicholas” and “Lines written after a snow-storm.”8 The elder daughter was Margaret (born June 16, 1815), first child of Eliza and Clement C. Moore. Margaret, too, would be gone the next year, passing away on April 13, 1845.
Another job that occupied Professor Moore in 1844 involved the selection and ordering of his poems for publication. At the urging of family and friends, Moore would include “A Visit from St. Nicholas” in his collection of Poems by Clement C. Moore, issued in New York on June 25th by Bartlett & Welford.
In February Moore somehow found out about the claim for Joseph Wood down in Washington. Unaware of the correction that had been printed in the National Intelligencer on December 28, 1843, Moore formally rebutted the false claim in a letter dated February 27, 1844 his to his friend Charles King, editor of the New York American. Moore’s letter affirming his authorship of “A Visit from St. Nicholas” appeared in the New York American on March 1, 1844; introduced by King as follows:
LINES TO ST. NICHOLAS.— The following note from our friend C. C. Moore, the author of those lines which every child among us delights to hear, about Christmas, and which parents with not less delight recite, brings to our notice, one of the boldest acts of plagiarism of which we have any recollection. We ask the National Intelligencer to have the goodness to insert Mr. Moore's note—and if possible to elucidate the mistake, if such it be, or fraud attempted in respect of such well known lines.
Around this time Moore also wrote to one or more proprietors of the defunct Troy Sentinel, perhaps to ask if Joseph Wood or anybody else had ever claimed authorship of “A Visit from St. Nicholas.” 9 This flurry of letter-writing in February 1844 may have been motivated, at least in part, by Moore’s sense of duty to his publishers. In 1837, George Dearborn had published his verses, including “A Visit from St. Nicholas” in the New-York Book of Poetry. Bartlett and Welford were about to reprint it. Moore would not have wanted to burden any publisher—past, present, or future—with a work of disputed authorship, or anything like an “authorship controversy.”
Mindful of all potential legal issues, Tom A. Jerman offers another explanation. Perhaps Moore, having borrowed the plot, main character, and transportation by reindeer-power from Old Santeclaus (originally published in 1821 by William Gilley), waited for the copyright on that poem in the Children’s Friend Number III to expire before expressly claiming “A Visit from St. Nicholas” as his own “literary property.”10 Another factor, possibly explaining the forcefulness of Moore’s published statement in 1844, could have been the bad reputation attached to some of Wood’s friends, meaning “those pretended friends—his companions of conviviality” who allegedly had enabled his licentious and ultimately self-destructive behavior. Whatever his aim, Moore did successfully prevent any of Wood’s surviving friends, good or bad, from ever lodging “so bold a claim” in the future.
No fears about disreputable friends could have bothered Professor Moore in connection with the prior claim for the late Rev. John W. Curtis, made in a letter to the editor of the Danbury Times, published there on January 3, 1838. In all probability, Moore never knew of the 1838 assertion that one of his former students at General Theological Seminary wrote “The Night Before Christmas.”
For the Times.
MR. EDITOR— In the Times of the 27th inst. I noticed that you had published the popular description of St. Nicholas, or Sante Claus’ visit, and on another page attributed it to the pen of Professor Clement C. Moore, upon the authority of a N.Y. paper. Allow me to assure you that not one word of that production emanated from the pen of the worthy Professor, nor will he claim it. It was written by a young man now no more. At the time of its first appearance the papers of the whole union called loudly for the author. Encomiums were heaped upon it—panegyrics without number. At the time it made its appearance, the author, not as yet arrived at the age of manhood, was diligently engaged in preparing for the ministry—it was the late Editor of the New York Churchman, the Rev. JOHN B. CURTIS. The four lines in quotation were written by his room-mate SULLIVAN C. VAN WYCK, of Albany, who is still living, and ready to testify to their authenticity. They are these:
“Now! Dasher, now! Dancer, now! Prancer and Vixen,
On! Comet, on! Cupid, on! Dunder and Blixen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!I deemed it a duty, Sir, a duty which I owed to a departed friend, to correct the erroneous opinion in regard to the authorship of the poem, and sincerely trust that you will give this room in your next paper.
ONE WHO KNOWS.
Signed “ONE WHO KNOWS,” this previously unnoticed item in the Danbury Times represents the earliest claim on record that somebody other than Clement C. Moore wrote “The Night Before Christmas.” In this case the writer alleges a collaboration between plural somebodies. The late Rev. Curtis, first editor of the New York Churchman, is said to have received a little help with the reindeer names from his college roommate. Regarding the roommate, I am unable to confirm the identity of Mr. Van Wyck, the supposed inventor of Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, and the rest. John W. Curtis entered Union College as a Sophomore in 1821 and graduated in 1824 with an A. M. degree. No person with the surname “Van Wyck” appears before 1848 in the General Catalogue of the Officers, Graduates, and Students of Union College, from 1795 to 1868. Wall Street banker Van Wyck Graham is listed with graduates in 1820, a resident of Albany then and four years ahead of Curtis.
As for the identity of ONE WHO KNOWS, my best guess at present would be Silas Henry Hickok, Esq. of Danbury, Connecticut. Two years behind Curtis, Hickok is listed with 1826 grads of Union College in both the General Catalogue and the Catalogue of the Members of the Philomathean Society.11 In the online Alumni File, Silas H. Hickok (1807-1846) is recorded as the “son of Silas and Rebecca (Comstock) Hickok,” a Union College graduate and lawyer in Bethel (then part of Danbury, Connecticut) before his death there on July 12, 1846. Active in town as a Democrat, lawyer, and Justice of the Peace, S. H. Hickok also chaired the “Board of Visiters of Common Schools.”12 In 1840 Hickok was slated to give the 4th of July oration in Westport, Connecticut; in 1843 he toasted Danbury’s local 4th of July speaker “Dr. Keys” as a “bold advocate of Democratic principles.” 13
Certain defining features of the 1838 letter are shared by the false claim for Joseph Wood in 1843 and later, similarly mistaken attributions. Most importantly, the communication contains a major error that invalidates the whole argument. Contrary to the writer’s supposition that Professor Moore would never claim to have written even “one word” of the Christmas poem, Moore in fact had already claimed the whole schmegegge by submitting it under his name for inclusion in the New-York Book of Poetry (New York: George Dearborn, 1837).
By early January 1837, Moore was being named with other contributors in newspaper ads for the anthology.14 In the American Monthly Magazine for January 1837, the favorable critical notice of the New-York Book of Poetry reprinted all of “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” calling special attention to “the name of the real author”:
The lines which follow have been much admired, and have appeared in a variety of publications, but never, we believe, before under the name of the real author—CLEMENT C. MOORE.
The October 1837 issue of the New-York Review gave an excerpt from “a visit from St. Nicholas, by Clement C. Moore,” deeming it “one of the most appropriate passages of the New-York Book.”
“ONE WHO KNOWS” obviously did not know about the positive identification of Clement C. Moore as the real author of “A Visit from St. Nicholas” in the 1837 New-York Book of Poetry. Moore had already claimed the Christmas poem, and would again, as we have seen, after the false attribution to Joseph Wood appeared in the National Intelligencer. OWK did not know, and in 1838 could not have known, that eight years later George H. Curtis would bring out a volume of his deceased brother’s best Poems, with no mention whatsoever of “A Visit from St. Nicholas.”
Another mistake (if not the correspondent’s error, perhaps that of an editor or typesetter) is the wrong middle initial in the name of the alternative candidate, given here as “John B. Curtis.” Clearly the writer means to identify “John W. Curtis,” indeed the first editor of the New York Churchman.15 Full name: John Washington Curtis.
Factual errors aside, another feature which this 1838 communication shares with later attributions, is the nomination of a deceased candidate for the honor of having written “The Night Before Christmas.” The claims for Curtis, and Wood after him, and Livingston after them, are alike in their being posthumously advanced, on behalf of men who never in their lives claimed authorship of the popular Christmas poem.
Of the three posthumously nominated candidates who never once mentioned writing “The Night Before Christmas,” John W. Curtis owns the earliest claim on record. Although entirely unsolicited, the Danbury attribution to Curtis in 1838 is far and away the best-grounded one in terms of biographical and historical evidence. Much of this evidence may be found in Poems by the late Rev. John W. Curtis, M. A. (New York: E. O. Jenkins, 1846) the posthumous collection edited by his younger brother George H. Curtis. While nothing like “A Visit from St. Nicholas” in style or content appears therein, the assembled verses do exhibit impressive classical learning and no little skill as a poet. Influenced by all the giants from Homer to Byron, Curtis was perhaps only beginning to develop his own fusion of romance and religion.
Unfortunately, John Washington Curtis would suffer from chronic illness that limited his effectiveness in successive employments as minister, editor, and school principal. His health worsened in New York City, where he had moved upon being asked to edit the Churchman. As recorded in the “Memoir” by George H. Curtis in Poems by the late Rev. John W. Curtis, John’s “former health was never more regained,” even after he quit that job to direct the “English and Classical” prep school associated with Trinity Church. George attended his “afflicted brother, for more than two long years” until his suffering finally ended:
“A pure and living faith in the merits of a Divine Redeemer sustained him to the last. He died on Sunday morning, June 7th, 1835.
His remains were taken to Troy, and deposited in the ground that is shaded at sunset by the mount so hallowed by him in his youth — his chosen resting-place in life and death — serene and sacred Ida.”
G. H. C.
In life, John W. Curtis was a bookish introvert, depicted in George’s Memoir as “contemplative and retiring, from early childhood.” Before attending Union College in Schenectady, Curtis studied Latin and Greek with “Dr. Stodart and Mr. McNiece, both of whom were good classical scholars.” Here the biographer-brother evidently means Yale grad William Stoddard, who ran a well-regarded classical school in Troy in partnership with his wife, the poet Lavinia Stoddard.16 Both the Dr. and Mrs. Stoddard left Troy for Alabama in October 1817, when John W. Curtis was only thirteen years old.17 As a specimen of John’s genius at 13, George gives his verse translation of one of the Latin odes by Horace.18
The introductory “Memoir” by his surviving brother George provides intriguing biographical evidence that directly connects John W. Curtis, a native of Troy, New York, with the Episcopal Church, with Rev. David Butler and family in Troy, and with the General Theological Seminary in New York City. As a student at GTS from 1824 to 1827, John would have read and translated from the Hebrew Bible in courses with Clement C. Moore, Professor of Oriental and Greek Literature. Moore is not cited by name anywhere in Poems by the Late Rev. John W. Curtis. However, the following passage from George’s Memoir tells of John’s early determination to attend GTS and John’s intimate acquaintance with Moore’s longtime colleague the Rev. David Butler as “pastor, early friend and guide”:
While in the Senior year, his mind was deeply impressed with the necessity of commencing a course of Biblical study, preparatory to his entrance into the General Theological Seminary, at New York, the following year. Neither unwearied attention to collegiate studies in all their variety, nor larger and more intimate knowledge of men and things, had diminished his reverence for the Sacred Volume, or weakened his determination, formed in early youth, to consecrate “life, talent, effort," to the work of saving souls. He had long participated in the holy Communion, administered by his pastor, early friend and guide, the late Rev. Dr. David Butler, of Troy, whose staunch and unwavering Christian course had from youth been his theme of deep regard, and time had only increased that regard for the holy man and his sacred office. Excellent old Christian! young teacher and warm-hearted brother! your spirits have met in Paradise!
John W. Curtis was a Junior at Union College in 1822 when his pastor’s daughter Harriet Butler reportedly visited with Clement C. Moore’s family in Manhattan, copied Dr. Moore’s unpublished Christmas poem into her common-place book, and in that form brought the verses home to Troy.19 Back home, Harriet doubtless would have shared the delightful rhymes with family members, friends, and interested church-goers in 1822-1823, before she or Sarah Sackett delivered a copy to Orville Holley, editor of the Troy Sentinel.20 George H. Curtis’s testimony of his brother’s close, personal attachment to David Butler allows for the possibility at least that John might have encountered Harriet’s early manuscript version of “A Visit from St. Nicholas” while visiting her father and the Butler household in Troy. Then just 18 years old (so “not as yet arrived at the age of manhood,” as stated by OWK, meaning the youth had not yet turned 21) young John might have made his own hand-written copy both for his private enjoyment, and to entertain his friends with at Union College.
While many details are admittedly conjectural, the proposed manner of circulating “The Night Before Christmas” through various stages of hearing, reading, copying, re-copying, and performing the text, from manuscript as well as print versions, has the great virtue of accounting for all three of the posthumous attributions that we know about—without necessarily imputing bad faith to any claimant. On exactly this point, the following editorial comment in the Washington National Intelligencer for March 6, 1844 offers a valuable insight, well worth remembering:
We have observed the request addressed to us by the New York American to copy a note of Mr. CLEMENT C. MOORE concerning the authorship of the admired lines of his, describing the visit of St. Nicholas. We should have pleasure in complying with the request, had not the purpose of it been anticipated by a publication made in this paper of the 28th December last. As to the “mistake, if such it be, or fraud attempted in respect of such well-known lines,” which the American asks us to elucidate, we can only say, that we have no idea that any fraud was intended by the unknown correspondent who attributed them to the late JOSEPH WOOD. Our conjecture in the matter is, that some friend of the late Mr. WOOD (who had many friends) finding among his papers, after his death, a copy of these lines in his hand-writing, took it for granted, in the absence of other information, that the authorship was also his, and liked the lines all the better for it.
Joseph Wood died in Washington City on June 15, 1830, “of dropsy in the chest” according to the mortuary notice headed “Death of a Man of Genius” in the Washington Daily National Intelligencer for June 16, 1830. Below there followed a lengthy “obituary sketch” signed “A PRINTER” lamenting the “indiscretions of maturer age, brought on by improper associations” that “embittered his latter days.” The New York Evening Post for June 18, 1830 announced the death on the 15th of “James Wood, Artist, formerly of this city, aged 52.”
J. K. Paulding, Sketch of the Life of Mr. Joseph Wood in the Portfolio Vol. 5 No. 1, January 1811, pages 64-68.
William Dunlap, History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States Volume 2 (New York: George P. Scott and Co., 1834) page 77.
“Portrait Miniatures in the New Republic,” The Magazine ANTIQUES, April 2009. https://www.themagazineantiques.com/article/portrait-miniatures-in-the-new-republic/
Dale T. Johnson, American Portrait Miniatures in the Manney Collection (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1990) page 233. https://www.google.com/books/edition/American_Portrait_Miniatures_in_the_Mann/od6eLeOkdkcC
Johnson references the article by George C. Groce, Jr. and J. T. Chase Willet, “Joseph Wood: A Brief Account of His Life and the First Catalogue of His Work” in Art Quarterly Volume 3 (Spring 1940) pages 149-161 and 393-400. The tract is titled, Wood's Latter Days, and His Death (Washington, D.C.: Temperance Association, 1834).
As Holley would later disclose concerning the source of the beloved Christmas verses, “not many months afterwards we learnt that they came from the pen of a most accomplished scholar and and estimable man, a professor in one of our colleges.” Ontario Repository and Freeman, December 28, 1836; reprinted in the Auburn Journal and Advertiser on Wednesday, January 4, 1837.
Troy Sentinel, January 20, 1829; reprinted in Arthur James Weise, Troy’s One Hundred Years, 1789-1889 (Troy, NY: William H. Young, 1891) pages 96-97.
Untitled and uncredited, Moore’s “Lines written after a snow-storm” originally appeared in the Troy Sentinel on February 20, 1824, less than two months after “A Visit from St. Nicholas.”
Only the reply is extant, written on February 26, 1844 by Sentinel publisher Norman Tuttle; a fine image of the original letter may be accessed online courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York. Mary Van Deusen gives a complete transcription of Tuttle’s reply on her magnificent Henry Livingston website: https://iment.com/maida/familytree/henry/pertinentconnectionsfortransfer-sources.htm
Tom A. Jerman, The Fight for “The Night”: Resolving the Authorship Dispute over “The Night Before Christmas” (2023) pages 29-32.
https://www.amazon.com/Fight-Night-Resolving-Authorship-Christmas/dp/B0CPHBY9KB/
Union College (Schenectady, NY). A General Catalogue of the Officers, Graduates And Students of Union College From 1795 to 1854. Schenectady: printed by S. S. Riggs, 1854; and Catalogue of the members of the Philomathean society, instituted in Union college, in 1795. Schenectady: Riggs, printer, 1847.
Reported, for example, in the Danbury Times on November 7, 1838; and October 30, 1839.
Danbury Times, June 24, 1840; and July 12, 1843.
Published, for example, in the New York Evening Post on January 3, 1837.
As profiled by the Rev. Clifton H. Brewer in “The History of the Churchman: Some Old-Time Editors,” the Churchman (November 28, 1925) pages 10-11 at page 10:
“The Rev. John W. Curtis, the first editor of THE CHURCHMAN itself, in 1831, remained only four months, just long enough to get the paper settled in its routine. Then he took up work as principal of the Collegiate School, corner of Varick and Canal streets, where, as his advertisements in subsequent numbers of THE CHURCHMAN explained, "young gentlemen" could prepare for college or for the "active pursuits of life" at a cost of ten dollars a quarter for classical students or six dollars for English pupils. We must not allow the brevity of Curtis's term as editor to discount the value of his work. It was no small task to plan and gather material for a new church paper in New York. His labors have not been sung, but they were an important part of the process of founding a valuable journal which has lastedand he served gratuitously.”
Francis Wayland (future Baptist minister and President of Brown University) knew and greatly admired the couple in Troy; as attested in his published Memoir of the Life and Labors of Francis Wayland by his sons, Francis Wayland and H. L. Wayland (New York: Sheldon and Company, 1868) Volume 1 at pages 48-49.
Anthony Stoddard of Boston, Mass., and his Descendants: 1639-1873 (New York: Poole and MacLauchlan, 1873) pages 256-7.
Poems by the late Rev. John W. Curtis (New York: Edward O. Jenkins, 1846) pages 10-11.
Livingston cousin T. W. C. Moore related the poem’s transmission history in his cover letter dated March 15, 1862 to the Librarian of the New-York Historical Society, sent with the holograph manuscript of “A Visit from St. Nicholas” by Clement C. Moore. As documented by Thomas William Channing Moore after a personal interview with the author,
“These lines were composed for his two daughters, as a Christmas present, about 40 years ago.—They were copied by a relative of Dr. Moores in her Album, from which a copy was made by a friend of hers, from Troy, and, much to the surprise of the Author, were published (for the first time) in a Newspaper of that city.—”
Quoted above from The New York Historical Society Quarterly Bulletin 2.4 (January 1919) pages 111-115. Another early account is that of Troy resident "Colonel" John Tappan Parker in the Troy Daily Times of December 23, 1871. As Parker tells it, naming names,
“the eldest daughter of Rev. David Butler, first rector of St. Paul's church, Miss Harriet Butler, on a visit to Prof. Clement C. Moore of Columbia College, New York, found on the centre table this 'Visit of St. Nicholas,' composed by the Professor for his children. Miss B. brought it to Troy with her, and gave a copy of it to O. L. Holley, the editor of the Troy Sentinel, published by Norman Tuttle. It took like wildfire, and was copied through the state.”
Reprinted on Christmas Day 1871 in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. For a later 19th century account, see the “Life of Clement C. Moore, LL,D” by William S. Pelletreau in the illustrated Visit of Saint Nicholas (New York: G. W. Dillingham Co., 1897) pages 17-18.
Sarah Sackett was first ID’d as the 1823 deliverer of Moore’s verses by former Sentinel publisher Norman Tuttle, in his letter to Clement C. Moore dated February 26, 1844. Saved in the Moore family, the original manuscript letter is now at the Museum of the City of New York, 54.331.17b.
How fun - our work so often interacts! James McCune Smith and Isaiah DeGrasse, as you may know, attended the collegiate school that John Curtis revived, on Canal and Varick.