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The earliest recorded statement by the Livingston family of Henry Livingston's claim to the Christmas poem comes in a letter written by Henry's daughter Elizabeth to Henry's great-great granddaughter, Anne Livingston Goodrich, the descendant of Elizabeth's half-sister Catharine. Henry + Sarah     Catharine (b:1775) + Arthur Breese         Catharine Walker Breese (b:1798) + Captain Samuel Griswold             Cornelia Platt Griswold (b:1821) + William McLean Goodrich             [sister of S.F.B. Morse's wife Sarah]                 Anne Livingston Goodrich (b:1851) Henry + Jane     Elizabeth (b:1805) In 1879, Elizabeth was the widow of both U.S. Supreme Court Justice Smith Thompson and Judge Richard Ray Lansing. She had returned to Poughkeepsie, and was living down the road from Locust Grove, in Rust Platz, the house where her sister-in-law, Eliza Clement Brewer, the wife of brother Charles, had lived when all the Livingston children were growing up. Elizabeth had been only 3 years old when the poem was recited, so she knew the poem had been her father's from her brothers telling her so.