Henry Livingston , Jr . Henry 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 . " The poem has always been attributed to Clement Clarke Moore , and the Livingston claim is hotly disputed . Biography . He was born on October 13 , 1748 in Poughkeepsie , New York , to Henry Livingston , Sr . and Susannah Conklin . In 1774 , Livingston married Sarah Welles , the daughter of Reverend Noah Welles , the minister of the Stamford , Connecticut Congregational Church . Their daughter Catherine was born shortly before Livingston joined the army on a six months ' enlistment . In 1776 , their son Henry Welles Livingston was born ; the child was fatally burned at the age of fourteen months and , when another son was born , he was given the same name , according to the common practice of necronym s . Livingston farmed . Sarah died in 1783 , and the children were boarded out . During this period Livingston began writing poetry . Over the next ten years , Livingston was occupied with poetry and drawings for his friends and family , some of which ended up in the pages of " New York Magazine " and the " Poughkeepsie Journal " . Although he signed his drawings , his poetry was usually anonymous or signed simply , " R " . Ten years to the day after Sarah ' s death , Livingston remarried . Jane Patterson , at 24 , was 21 years younger than her husband . Their first baby arrived nine months after the wedding . After that , the couple bore seven more children . It was for this second family that Henry Livingston is believed by some to have written the famous poem known as " A Visit from St . Nicholas " or " The Night Before Christmas " . This famous Christmas poem first appeared in the " Troy Sentinel " on December 23 , 1823 . There seems to be no question that the poem came out of the home of Clement Moore , and the person giving the poem to the newspaper , without Moore ' s knowledge , certainly believed the poem had been written by Moore . 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 . In 1844 , Moore published the poem in his own book , " Poems " . At multiple times in his later life , Moore wrote out the now famous poem in longhand for his friends . Dispute over authorship . 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 , 26 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 . 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 . By 1879 , five separate lines of Henry ' s descendants had begun 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 . 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 1919 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 . Later , Moore descendants arranged to have an elderly family connection , Maria Jephson O ' Conor , depose about her memories of Moore ' s claim of authorship . On independent grounds , Don Foster , Professor of English at Vassar , has argued that Livingston is a more likely candidate for authorship than Moore . Foster ' s claim , however , has 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 " . There is no proof that Livingston himself ever claimed authorship , nor has any record ever been found of any printing of the poem with Livingston ’ s name attached to it .