On New Year's Eve 1834 the enterprising ladies of St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Morristown, New Jersey hosted a fun holiday fair at the splendid "Court room" occupying half the second story of the now historic Morris County Courthouse. Jolly old St. Nicholas himself made a personal appearance, possibly the first ever witnessed at an organized public event.
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| Newark Daily Advertiser - December 18, 1834 via genealogybank.com |
"The Ancient patron-saint of children, St. Nicholas, is announced to attend the Fair of the Ladies of the Morris Episcopal Church at the Court room on New Years eve."
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| Courtroom #1 - Morris County Courthouse |
More details of the festivities in store had been shared in the Morristown Jerseyman on December 17, 1834. For any readers who might have been unfamiliar with St. Nicholas as midwinter gift-giver, the local newspaper gave his better known alias, "Santaclaas."
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| Morristown Jerseyman - December 17, 1834 via genealogybank.com |
A Happy New Year.
The Ladies of the Episcopal Society will give a Fair at the Court Room, on Wednesday, 31st inst. at 4 o'clock P. M. A profusion of refreshments will be provided, with a variety of toys, books, and articles suited for New Years Eve. It is expected that St. Nicholas, commonly called Santaclaas, will honor the meeting with his personal presence, in ... to purchase various articles to be ... to the stockings of good children.Should the weather prove unfavorable, the Fair will be postponed to the [next?] fine day.
Of all the seasons, this is peculiarly ... as to good cheer, social habits ... cultivation of liberal sentiment. ...foregoing notice it seems that...will be united at the Court house...last evening of this year. ...hope to see our fellow citizens ...y [of any?] age and sex, party and...ing in that direction at the appointed hour.
The meeting deserves public patronage for this additional motive; that its pecuniary profit is destined to aid in purchasing a Parsonage for the Episcopal Church in this Town.
Besides the usual fun and games and the big draw, Santa Claus, attendees could look forward to "a profusion of refreshments" and plenty of attractive books, toys, and other items suitable for gifting to friends and family members. Back then Santa happily delivered on New Year's Eve. Really "good children" might expect to find their stockings loaded with presents the next morning, on New Year's Day, instead of or in addition to Christmas morning. Profits from this particular event, as explained at the end of the published announcement in the Morristown Jerseyman (December 17, 1834), would be donated to the fund already established for building a parsonage at the Episcopal Church.
Undeterred by the furious snowstorm in Morristown on the 29th of December, St. Nicholas aka "Santaclaas" did in fact make his scheduled court date on New Year's Eve, 1834. Independent verification of Santa's appearance is provided in the manuscript diary of a young visitor named Francis Prioleau Lee (1814-1847), then a student at General Theological Seminary (GTS) in New York City. Lee, age 20, had been staying at the famous Ford Mansion ("once the headquarters of Gen. Washington") as a guest of his classmate and best friend Alfred Edmund Ford (1808-1893), a grandson of its builder Colonel Jacob Ford, Jr. There at "the White house," as Lee called it, prep for the upcoming fest and fundraiser began the day after Christmas. Lee's considerable literary skills were enlisted in composing versified predictions or "fortunes" to be offered for sale as unique New Year's gifts.
"Friday 26. Rained again. I read Miss Hannah Moore's Memoirs, and a part of Mrs. Jameson's works. The evening we spent very pleasantly around the center table making poetical fortunes to be sold at the approaching fair."Party business continued to occupy Lee as a guest in the Ford household, right up to fair-day.
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Francis P. Lee Papers; Francis P. Lee Diary, 1833-1835 Special Collections Research Center, William & Mary Libraries |
Wednesday 31. Spent the day in helping to make articles for the fair and in the evening went to attend it. It was held in the court room and under the auspices of a figure called St. Nicholas who was robed in fur, and dressed according to the description of Prof Moore in his poem. Here I met most of my friends and passed a very pleasant evening.
New Years day. Thursday. Ford and I went out in the sleigh and paid 17 or 18 calls and then dined on venison at his Brother's....
Francis P. Lee Papers, Mss. 65 L51. Francis P. Lee Diary, 1833-1835; Box: 11, Folder: 2. William and Mary Libraries, Special Collections Research Center. https://scrcguides.libraries.wm.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/330840Francis P. Lee's 1833-1835 diary is rich with intrinsic value as autobiography and cultural history. Quoted above, the entry for Wednesday, December 31, 1834 also provides strong documentary support for the traditional attribution of "A Visit from St. Nicholas" ("'Twas the night before Christmas....") to Lee's Hebrew teacher at GTS, Clement C. Moore. First published anonymously in the Troy, New York Sentinel on December 23, 1823, the now classic Christmas poem had already been linked to Moore in print, through a cagey and allusive statement in the same newspaper by Sentinel editor Orville L. Holley:
Santa Claus.--A few days since, the Editors of the N. Y. Courier, at the request of a lady, inserted some lines descriptive of one of the Christmas visits of that good old Dutch saint, St. Nicholas, and at the same time applied to our Albany neighbors for information as to the author. That information, we apprehend, the Albany editors cannot give. The lines were first published in this paper. They came to us from a manuscript copy in possession of a lady in this city. 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. We republish the lines in a preceding column, just as they originally appeared, because we still think of them as at first, and for the satisfaction of our brethren of the Courier, one of whom, at least, is an Arcadian.
Holley had not explicitly identified the poet by name, although his 1829 remarks did contain a fairly obvious pun on Moore's surname, ranking him as "a gentleman of more merit as a scholar and a writer" than other pretenders (likewise unnamed) and revealing him to be a New Yorker "by birth and residence." In print, "A Visit from St. Nicholas" would not be formally ascribed to Clement C. Moore until Moore himself submitted it along with three other poems to Charles Fenno Hoffman for inclusion in the New York Book of Poetry (New York: George Dearborn, 1837). However, as the private testimony of Francis P. Lee casually discloses, Moore's authorship of "The Night Before Christmas" was already known to Lee and presumably other of Moore's students, friends, and faculty colleagues at the General Theological Seminary.-- Troy Sentinel for January 20, 1829; accessible online via NYS Historic Newspapers.
While a college student at William & Mary, Sandra D. Hayslette first discovered Lee's previously unknown reference to the Morristown appearance of Santa Claus, "dressed according to the description of Prof Moore in his poem." Hayslette is duly credited for this wonderful find by Stephen Nissenbaum in a note to chapter 4 (page 345 note 85) of The Battle for Christmas (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996). For Nissenbaum, the importance of Lee's diary account lay in its early observation (perhaps the earliest on record) of a living Santa impersonator. At the time, Nissenbaum was naturally unconcerned with defending Clement C. Moore in the authorship dispute that would be revived and rehashed a few years later by supposed Literary Forensics Expert Don Foster in the last chapter of Author Unknown (Henry Holt and Company, 2000).
Overlooked by Moore's defenders as well as doubters in subsequent considerations of the authorship question, the manuscript diary of Francis P. Lee merits a closer inspection. My first aim, herein accomplished, was simply to find the thing. Nissenbaum in the back of the Battle for Christmas pointed me to the archive at GTS library. These days even getting there virtually feels something like that scene in National Lampoon's Vacation where Chevy Chase and fam finally arrive at Wally World.
The Keller Library building and collections are currently closed.
Fortunately, however, excellent support is available "through the GTS affiliation with Virginia Theological Seminary." Vincent Williams, User Services Librarian with the Bishop Payne Library at Virginia Theological Seminary kindly informed me that the cited material was not currently inventoried in the GTS library holdings and referred me back to William & Mary. For generous assistance with locating it there, finally, and with obtaining scanned images of its contents, I am grateful to Carolyn Wilson, Research Assistant; and Kaitlyn G. Weathers, Digitization Specialist with the Special Collections Research Center in Earl Gregg Swem Library, William & Mary Libraries.
Here and now I can offer one correction and several words not supplied in the 1996 transcription by Stephen Nissenbaum:
- Correction: Diary and advance newspaper notices of the event agree, the date of Lee's visit to the fair in Morristown was definitely Wednesday, December 31, 1834. New Year's Eve 1834, not 1833.
- Missing words: Ellipses in Nissenbaum's version indicate five omitted words: "in the court room and." Lee's word court in "court room" may have seemed difficult to decipher with confidence, and a strange place to put Santa Claus outside of Miracle on 34th Street. But court is right, as doubly confirmed in two different newspaper announcements, published in the Morristown Jerseyman on December 17, and the Newark Daily Advertiser on December 18, 1834.
- On Wednesday, December 3rd Lee "Recited Law's letter to Hoadley to Bp Onderdonk for 1 hour, and Hebrew to Prof. Moore one more."
- One week later on the 10th Lee again recited from Law's Letters to Bishop Hoadley to Onderdonk and "Hebrew to Dr. Moore."
- On December 11, 1834 Lee "Recited Hebrew to Prof. Moore."
Early in the New Year 1835, Lee visited Moore in person after tea with "Mrs. Turner" (Mary Esther Beach Turner, wife of GTS professor Samuel Hulbeart Turner). As Lee recorded on Tuesday, January 20, 1835:
"I next called Prof. Moore and took tea again here had some delightful music from his daughter Margaret talked about female writers &c."
Next day, Jan. 21, Lee "Studied a lesson in Hebrew for Dr. Moore." At the end of the month Lee specifically resolved "to study Hebrew with more devotion." On Sunday Feb. 1, 1835 he extended this pledge:
"I am determined at all accounts to be more attentive to my duties. How will this resolution be regarded a week hence?"
On the following Sunday, February 8, 1834 Lee felt reasonably satisfied with his turnaround:
"The resolution recorded page 138 has been in some degree persevered in. I have risen early and have studied Hebrew, both of them hard duties for me."
The manuscript diary of Francis P. Lee offers a valuable record of his youthful friendships and flirtations; one long and often frustrating romantic infatuation; his reading of Shakespeare and popular works like the Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Mrs. Hannah Moore, Scott's Peveril of the Peak, and Bulwer-Lytton's The Last Days of Pompeii along with assigned Bible chapters, sermons, and other religious texts; some of his travels and adventures during breaks; bouts with "the blues" and endurance of occasionally debilitating physical illness. For many reasons, and from many perspectives, the whole volume will doubtless reward further study. Thanks again to all the fine librarians and staff persons at William & Mary, Earl Gregg Swem Library for access to digital copies that make this ongoing research possible.
Title: Francis P. Lee Papers; Francis P. Lee Diary, 1833-1835
Series 2: Acc. 2011.285 Addition, 1827-1933
Author: Francis P. Lee
Volume/Box: Box: 11, Folder: 2
For one more sample in closing, here below is an excerpt from Lee's diary entry on Saturday, February 7, 1835 recounting his experience of Shabbat services in nearby Manhattan synagogues. After consecutive days of hard study during the first week of February, Lee "was examined in Hebrew" on Friday, February 6th. On Saturday, February 7, 1835 Lee
"... went with Babbit and Germain [classmates Pierre Teller Babbitt and Reuben I. Germain] to the Jewish Synagogue near foot of Canal St. large room with galleries around 3 sides. The fourth occupied by a semicircular enclosure, with a vail hung before it. This contains their different Rolls of Parchment highly ornamented, dressed in satin with silver knobs and bells. We soon became tired of the monotonous tone in which the reader cantillated, and went up to Crosby street, where there is another in a much superior style. Tho there were the same arrangement in both. both having in the middle of the Room a raised platform, square, railed, contained a reading desk. This was of the Ionic order. The galleries were appropriated to Females, and under them were long parallel pews for the spectators, leaving a wide space between them and the central enclosure. The ceremony of depositing the Law soon commenced. A procession was formed from the central enclosure, led by a man bearing the Scroll; they proceeded by a motion so slow as to be imperceptible, and all the while the congregation chaunted. The voices were very musical, and I think I never heard such wild thrilling sounds in my life. They ring in my ears yet. A young man gave me his book and I followed them as they sang. My mind was deeply impressed, and it made me melancholy to see this relic of what once was so grand."
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| Crosby Street Synagogue Exterior via Congregation Shearith Israel |
Related posts
- Santa Claus comes on New Year's Eve
https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2017/12/santa-claus-comes-on-new-years-eve.html
- Francis P. Lee on Moore's authorship of The Night Before Christmas https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2017/12/francis-p-lee-in-1833-on-clement-c.html
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