Henry Livingston Jr. Henry Livingston Jr. Henry Beekman Livingston Jr. (October 13, 1748 – February 29, 1828) has been proposed as being the uncredited author of the poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas", more popularly known (after its first line) as "The Night Before Christmas". Credit for the poem was taken in 1837 by Clement Clarke Moore, a Bible scholar in New York City, nine years after Livingston's death. It was not until another twenty years that the Livingston family knew of Moore's claim, and it was not until 1900 that they went public with their own claim. Since then, the question has
Saint Nicholas Nicholas's death. The earliest complete account of Nicholas's life that has survived to the present is a "Life of Saint Nicholas", written in the early ninth century by Michael the Archimandrite (814–842), nearly 500 years after Nicholas's probable death. Despite its extremely late date, Michael the Archimandrite's "Life of Saint Nicholas" is believed to heavily rely on older written sources and oral traditions. The identity and reliability of these sources, however, remains uncertain. Catholic historian D. L. Cann and medievalist Charles W. Jones both consider Michael the Archimandrite's "Life" the only account of Saint Nicholas that is likely to contain