May 16 Sunday – Pennsylvania arrived in New Orleans. While there, Sam met fourteen-year-old Laura Wright (1845-1932). They spent most of the three days together. Sam was then twenty-two, but the age difference was not unusual in those days. Laura was with her father, Judge Foster P. Wright of Warsaw, Missouri, visiting her uncle, William C. Youngblood and her cousin Zeb Leavenworth on the John J. Roe. Sam went to visit Zeb and Beck Jolly, old mates from past trips. In his Autobiography Sam described Laura:
…that slip of a girl of whom I have spoken—that instantly elected sweetheart out of the remoteness of interior Missouri—a frank and simple and winsome child who had never been away from home in her life before…I was not four inches from that girl’s elbow during our waking hours for the next three days…I could see her with the perfect distinctness in the unfaded bloom of her youth, with her plaited tails dangling from her young head and her white summer frock puffing about in the wind of that ancient Mississippi time…[Neider 80].
Years later, Laura would marry a Mr. Dake. Sam claimed to have only seen Laura once, but they corresponded and Sam did visit Warsaw again (see May 13, 1880 entry for letter from Thomas H. Murray). There are echoes of Sam’s affection for Laura in several of his writings [MTL 1: 114n7; MT Encyclopedia, Baetzhold 799]. Note: Powers cites Sam’s notebook: May 6, 1858, of leaving Laura, but on that date the Pennsylvania was in St. Louis. All sources give New Orleans as their place of meeting.