February 2 Wednesday – Samuel L. Clemens married Olivia Louise Langdon. Congregational ministers Joseph Twichell and Thomas K. Beecher performed the ceremony at 7 PM. Over one hundred guests looked on in the parlors of the Langdon home in Elmira, including Sam’s sister, Pamela Moffett and his niece Annie, who had arrived several days before the wedding to get acquainted with the bride and her family. Mary Mason Fairbanks arrived after Sam’s family. Olivia wore a white satin dress with long white veil and gloves that nearly reached her shoulders. After the wedding there was a supper with non-alcoholic beverages. Sam had sworn off of alcohol for the past year [Sanborn 444]. (See MTL 4: 42-4 for a long list of guests).
Sam received a check for $4,309.42 from his publishers for royalties from Innocents Abroad [MTL 4: 42n1].
Sam may have inscribed William Smith’s A Concise Dictionary of the Bible (1865): “Livie L. Langdon / Feb 2d 1870” Note: Sam did not use this spelling of “Livy” in any other letters found.
The title page of an English New Testament (1869) was inscribed: “The Clemens’s. S.L. & O.L. Feby. 2d, 1870” [Gribben 68].