Most people, even from Queens, don't know that Moore's family his were among some of the first settlers in this borough, and childhood memories of holidays at his grandfather's home in Newtown were a strong influence for his beloved poem "A Visit from St Nicholas (T'was The Night Before Christmas....)" We should be proud that the delightful world painted in the lines of that poem are likely rooted in Queens.
The ancestral 1650s Moore home, the oldest building in Queens, stood in Moore Park in Newtown (Elmhurst) until the 1930s when it was destroyed for subway construction. Woodside's Moore-Jackson cemetery became a New York City Landmark a few years ago.
The Moore family includes some notable personalities: ministers, Bishops, militiamen, Presidents of Columbia, teachers, gentlemen farmers, vandals, Patriots, and British sympathizers. Members of his family were involved in Washington's Inauguration, giving last rites to Alexander Hamilton, asking the Dutch to stop arming Indians, founding Newtown Township, developing the Chelsea neighborhood in Manhattan, buying land from the Indians, starting the first school and the first church in Newtown, later destroying a church. They armed townspeople to fight against the American Revolution, entertained British officers, and for another, wrote letters defending the American colonists' pro-Revolutionary ideas.
Lecturer Marjorie Dearborn Melikian specializes in the history of Newtown (Elmhurst), one of the oldest communities of Queens. Marjorie is the founder and Chair of the Historical Committee of The First Presbyterian Church of Newtown. The 1652 church, the oldest church congregation in Queens, had John Moore, Clement Clarke's ancestor, as its first of twenty-four ministers going back over 350 years. It both actively serves the local community while attracting a steady steam of family historians around the country. The church has invaluable and fascinating original records dating back to 1708 which church members care for, research, and currently are transcribing.
In 2003, Marjorie, who chaired the church's 350th Anniversary Committee, attracted wide attention when she donated a planting of a Newtown Pippin apple trees to the church front lawn. Long gone from Newtown, they originated here and were a local export known around the world.
Born in Portland, Maine, an interest in history runs in Marjorie's blood. A distant relative founded Dearborn, Michigan. Marj's interest took off through helping her mother transcribe 150 year old family letters which were donated to the Public Archives of Nova Scotia. Both Marjorie's parents were Directors of the Maine Genealogical Society, and her mother, who traced family ancestry back to the 1500s, was a librarian for an LDS Genealogical Library in Maine.
