It's likely Twain traveled to Indianapolis from Paris, IL on January 1, 1872 as he attended church in Paris December 31, 1871.
Both the New York Central and the Pennsylvania Railroads had connections between Paris and Indianapolis. The NYC, as per the Wikipedia article, maps the Terre Haute Railroad and the St Louis and Indianapolis Railroads. The Wikipedia article for the Pennsylvania Railroad maps the Paris and Terre Haute Railroad and the Terre Haute and Richmond Railroad. This line was associated with the Vandalia Railroad.
USGS Quads map this as part of the New York Central Railroad (Indianapolis - 1953 U.S. Geological Survey Historical Topographic Map Collection, scale 1:250,000.) from Paris to Terre Haute and then to Indianapolis. The Wikipedia article on the New York Central Railroad maps this as the Terre Haute and Alton Railroad from Paris to Terre Haute and the St Louis and Indianapolis Railroad to Indianapolis.
The Indianapolis and St Louis Railway was created in 1867 and was likely operating by 1870. It assumed control of the St Louis, Alton and Terre Haute Railroad. It became part of the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St Louis Railway on June 30, 1889, which was subsequently acquired by the New York Central in 1906.
The St Louis, Alton and Terre Haute ran between Paris and Terre Haute and the Indianapolis and St Louis to Indianapolis. Another possible line from Terre Haute to Indianapolis was the Terre Haute and Richmond or the Terre Haute and Indianapolis, which became the Pennsylvania line.
January 1 - Association Hall, Indianapolis, Indiana - "Roughing It"
From Indianapolis to Logansport through Kokomo, the USGS Quad indicates the New York, Chicago and St Louis Railroad, known as the Nickel Plate Railroad. At the time of Mark Twain's travels this was the Indianapolis, Peru and Chicago Rail Way. It became part of the NYC&SL in 1920. From Kokomo to Logansport, the Cincinnati and Chicago Railroad.
January 2 - Opera House, Logansport, Indiana - "Roughing It"
Return to Kokomo and takes the Cincinnati and Chicago to Richmond. This line has an unclear history of ownership that includes the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago and St Louis Railroad. It would eventually become part of the Pennsylvania Railroad.
January 3 - Richmond, Indiana - "Roughing It"
From Richmond to Daytona, by the USGS map, on the Pennsylvania Railroad. This link was the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and St Louis Railway. The history of this line includes the Dayton and Western Railroad, the Little Miami Railroad and the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad.
Sam stayed at the Beckel House, Room 169.
January 4 - Music Hall, Dayton, Ohio - "Roughing It"
Sam's most likely route from Dayton to Columbus would have been on the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati & St Louis Railway, which had been the Little Miami Railroad, which in turn consisted of the Dayton, Xenia and Belpre to Xenia and the Columbus and Xenia to Columbus. Another possibility was the Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Indianapolis Railroad from Dayton the London, that had been the Cincinnati, Sandusky and Cleveland Railroad, and the PC&StLRR from London to Columbus.
January 5 - Opera House, Columbus, Ohio - "Roughing It"
Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati to Galion or Crestline. "Failing to make connection at Crestline {forty miles west of Wooster} he hired an engine to bring him to Wooster." SLC to OLC, 7 Jan 1872, Wooster, Ohio (UCCL 00708), n. 3. The railway line to Wooster would have been the Ohio and Pennsylvania Railroad, part of the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railroad.
January 6 - Arcadome Hall, Wooster, Ohio - "Roughing It"
Sam was in Wooster on Sunday, January 7th as per a telegram from Sam to Howells, Mark Twain-Howells Letters
The Ohio and Pennsylnia Railroad, part of the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railroad.
January 8 - Concert Hall, Salem, Ohio - "Roughing It"
Sam, in a letter to Olivia makes an observation about his midwestern audiences: "Well, slowly this lecturing penance drags toward the end. Heaven knows I shall be glad when I get far away from these country communities of wooden-heads. Whenever I want to go w away from New England again, lecturing, please show these letters to me & bring me to my senses. How I do chafe & sweat when I count up the Dutch audiences I have yet to play the fool before."
This seems to be reflected in a review from the Salem newspaper: "The Salem Republican judged that Clemens’s 8 January lecture “as a whole” did not meet expectations. It praised “some passages of fine description and word painting,” but complained that “no one could tell when he told the truth or when he was indulging in fiction, and when he was half through, his hearers had lost confidence in his sayings, and did not expect to be told anything on which they could rely” (10 Jan 72, transcript in CU-MARK courtesy of William Baker)." SLC to OLC, 8 Jan 1872, Salem, Ohio (UCCL 00711), n. 1.
To Steubenville from Salem: Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago to Alliance; Cleveland and Pittsburgh to the Ohio River; there are then several sections of a no-name line to Steubenville that the USGS quads identify as the Pennsylvania RR.
January 9 - Gray and Garrett's Hall, Steubenville, Ohio - "Roughing It"
In a letter to Olivia, Sam bemoans the loss of riverboat business to the railroad.: "These windows overlook the Ohio—once alive with [steamboats ] & crowded with all manner of traffic; but now a deserted stream, victim of the railroads. Where be the pilots. They were starchy boys, in my time, & greatly envied by the youth of the West. The same with the Mississippi pilots—though the Mobile & Ohio [Railroad ] had already walked suddenly off with the passenger business in my day, & so it was the beginning of the end."
Notes from the Mark Twain Project provide some detail on this phenomena: Competition between railroads and steamboats on the Ohio was first joined in 1854; by 1857, with the advent of daily passenger trains between Cincinnati and St. Louis, the railroads had won. During the same period the Mobile and Ohio Railroad and the New Orleans, Jackson, and Great Northern Railroad were extended northward paralleling the Mississippi. Continuous rail service between Cincinnati and New Orleans was in place by 1859 and was expected to “take a large passenger business from the steamers,” according to a Cincinnati report on commerce. With the interruption caused by the war, however, “rail service improved so slowly on this route that twenty years were to pass before the position of steamboats on the Mississippi below Cairo was seriously threatened” (Hunter, 485–86). Clemens dealt briefly with the same events in chapter 15 of Life on the Mississippi:
First, the new railroad stretching up through Mississippi, Tennessee, and Kentucky, to Northern railway centers, began to divert the passenger travel from the steamers; next the war came and almost entirely annihilated the steamboating industry during several years ...; and finally, the railroads intruding everywhere, there was little for steamers to do, when the war was over, but carry freights; so straightway some genius from the Atlantic coast introduced the plan of towing a dozen steamer cargoes down to New Orleans at the tail of a vulgar little tug-boat; and behold, in the twinkling of an eye, as it were, the association and the noble science of piloting were things of the dead and pathetic past! (SLC 1883, 191–92)
SLC to OLC, 10 Jan 1872, Steubenville, Ohio (UCCL 00712), n. 2.
From Steubenville to Wheeling there are two possible lines. On the west bank of the Ohio River is the Bellaire Branch of the Cleveland and Pittsburgh Railroad. It crosses the Ohio River at Martin's Ferry, just north of Wheeling. Along the east bank of the Ohio River is the Pittsburgh, Wheeling and Kentucky Railroad.
January 10 - Washington Hall, Wheeling, West Virginia - "Roughing It"
From Wheeling to Pittsburgh, depending upon which side of the Ohio River Twain was on, he could have taken what would become the Pennsylvania Railroad to Steubenville and crossed the Ohio River on...
"Steubenville's first bridge to cross the Ohio River was built between 1857 and 1865. The bridge connected the S&I (Steubenville and Indiana Railroad) and P&S (Pittsburgh and Steubenville Railroad). The new railroad line was operated by the Western Transportation Company as the Pittsburgh, Columbus, and Cincinnati Railroad until 1868, when multiple companies joined together as the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and St. Louis Railway. All that remains of the original bridge is one pier which now braces the most current railroad bridge, viewable from State Route 7. Pennsylvania Railroad Bridge, Steubenville
From Steubenville ran the Pittsburgh and Steubenville Railroad, sold under foreclosure in 1867 to the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad, known as the Panhandle Railway, that traveled to Pittsburgh.
January 11 - Mercantile Library Hall, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania - "Roughing It"
The Allegheny Valley Railroad ran between Pittsburgh and Kittanning. Twain was not impress with the town: “Livy darling, this is a filthy, stupid, hateful Dutch village, like all Pennsylvania—& I have got to lecture to these leatherheads tonight, but shall leave for Pittsburgh at 3 in the morning, & spend Sunday in that black but delightful town”
No reviews of Clemens’s performance in Kittanning have been found. With no lecture scheduled on the weekend, Clemens planned to make the thirty-five-mile rail journey back to Pittsburgh early on Saturday morning, 13 January. His favorable impression of Pittsburgh dated from his successful lectures there in November 1868 and November 1869 (L2, 282–83, 298; L3, 382 n. 2).
SLC to OLC, 12 Jan 1872, Kittanning, Pa. (UCCL 00715), n. 1.
January 12 - Kittanning, Pennsylvania - "Roughing It"
Twain returned to and spent the weekend in Pittsburgh. He took the train to Lock Haven on the 16th. the Pennsylvania Railroad. The Wikipedia article map indicates the route as the Altoona to Pittsburgh, the Marysville - Altoona to Tyrone and the Bald Eagle Valley Railroad to Lock Haven.
January 16 - Opera House, Lock Haven, Pennsylvania - "Roughing It"
From Lock Haven to Milton the Philadelphia and Erie, previously known as the Sunbury and Erie Railroad, to Milton. The line was leased to the Pennsylvania RR in 1862 and merged in 1907.
January 17 - Milton, Pennsylvania - "Roughing It"
From Milton, the Philadelphia and Erie would continue to Sunbury. From Sunbury the Northern Central Railroad to Dauphin where it crosses the Susquehanna River to the west side. The Harrisburg-Marysville Branch continues on the east bank to Harrisburg.
January 18 - Court House, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania - "Roughing It"
Twain traveled to Lancaster for the January 19th lecture and returned to Harrisburg for the weekend. He likely took the Harrisburg, Portsmouth, Mount Joy and Lancaster Railroad. This line was operated by the Pennsylvania RR from 1849, re-leased in 1861 and finally merged in 1917. From Columbia to Lancaster was the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad, which became part of the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1857.
January 19 - Fulton Opera House, Lancaster, Pennsylvania - "Roughing It"
The Cumberland Valley Railroad: During the American Civil War the line had strategic importance in supplying Union troops in the Shenandoah Valley. It also ran the first passenger sleeping car in the U.S. on the Chambersburg-Harrisburg route in 1839. The Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) gained control of the CVRR as early as 1859, and officially purchased it on June 2, 1919.
January 22 - Old Methodist Church, Carlisle, Pennsylvania - "Roughing It"
Returned to the west side of the Susquehanna River at Harrisburg then south on the Northern Central to Baltimore. The Northern Central operated as a subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Railroad from 1861.
January 23 - Maryland Institute, Baltimore, Maryland - "Roughing It"
From Baltimore to New York City: Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore; from Baltimore to Philadelphia. Then the Philadelphia and Trenton, which had been leased to the Pennsylvania RR June 30, 1871, the Camden and Amboy then the New Jersey Railroad to New York. Another possible line from Baltimore was the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad to Philadelphia. Sam stayed at the St Nicholas Hotel
January 24 - Steinway Hall, New York, New York - "Roughing It"
Twain returned to Hartford for the weekend: New York and New Haven Railroad and the New Haven, Hartford and Springfield Railroad. The trip to Scranton, Pennsylvania would entail a return to New York City then aboard the New Jersey Central and the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western to Scranton.
January 29 - Klein's Opera House, Scranton, Pennsylvania - "Roughing It"
Twain would have returned to Jersey City along the same route he took to get to Scranton. After the lecture Sam took the ferry back to New York and spent the night at the St. Nicholas.
January 30 - The Tabernacle, Jersey City, New Jersey - "Roughing It"
January 31 Wednesday – Sam again took a ferry and lectured in Opera House, Paterson, New Jersey – “Roughing It” [MTPO]. Sam probably spent the night at Paterson’s Franklin House Hotel [MTL 5: 39].
January 31 - Opera House, Paterson, New Jersey - "Roughing It"
From New York City, Twain would have taken the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad, Hudson River Railroad to Troy and the Troy and Greenbush and the Hudson and Boston Railroads to Troy.
February 1 - Rand's Hall, Troy, New York - "Roughing It"
Twain returned to Hartford.
February 21 - Opera House, Danbury, Connecticut - "Roughing It"
Lorch writes: "While it turned out to be quite rewarding financially, in other ways it was probably the most troublesome and least satisfying of all his tours, filled with worries about contriving new lectures and being satisfied with few of them. To Mrs. Fairbanks he confided 'I think I built and delivered 6 different lectures during the season-and as I lectured 6 nights in the week and never used notes, you may fancy what a fatiguing, sleepy crusade it was.'" (pg 121)
February 27 Tuesday – Sam lectured at College Hall, Amherst, Mass.,
his last lecture of the season – “Roughing It.” Afterward Sam attended an oyster dinner and told stories of his piloting days and of spirit mediums in New York. The reviews were poor, but the dinner was a great hit [MTL 5: 49n3].