Clement Clarke Moore (1779–1863)

American educator, and the son of Benjamin Clarke Moore, a Protestant Episcopal bishop of New York; born in New York City on the 15th of July 1779; graduated at Columbia College in 1798; studied theology, but never took orders, devoting himself to classical and oriental literatures; made a gift to the General Theological (Protestant Episcopal) Seminary of the plot of ground in New York City whereon the present buildings were erected, in 1818; he became a professor in the seminary first of Biblical learning in 1821, later of Greek and Oriental literatures, a chair he occupied until 1850, being considered the pioneer of Hebraic teaching in this country. He wrote the first Hebrew and Greek Lexicon (2 vols., 1809) published in America; he compiled his father’s sermons, and wrote a volume of Poems (1844), among which is found the well-known poem, “’Twas the Night Before Christmas.” He died in Newport, RI, on the 10th of July 1863.