February  22 Monday – Sam’s mother, Jane Clemens, was baptized at the First  Presbyterian Church of Hannibal [Dempsey  55].
 

February  18 Thursday – Sam’s mother, Jane Clemens, joined the First  Presbyterian Church of Hannibal [Dempsey  55]. Note: Dempsey found no record  that John Marshall Clemens or his sons ever joined the church.
 

February  7 Sunday – Sam’s sister Pamela joined the First Presbyterian Church of  Hannibal [Dempsey 55].
 

Sam’s  father traveled to Tennessee hoping to collect old debts and raise money  on the infamous Tennessee Land, some 75,000 acres, which  became a millstone to the family; the land was ultimately sold in the 1880s for  not much more than John Marshall paid for it. John took a slave, Charlie, to sell, but did not get what he expected. In fact the trip was a total failure, costing Sam’s father  about $200 [Powers, Dangerous 124-5]. Together, John Marshall and son Orion had a remarkable string of business failures.

November  1 Monday – Sam  gave his “Savages lecture in Pittsburgh,  Pa., Academy of Music [MTPO].

Elisha  Bliss wrote: “We want to pay up.  Shall we forward statement & check to you at Elmira or await your arrival  here?…Can’t you send us list of engagements so far made. … Are you married? We  hear of it so often & have contradicted it…Post us up!” [MTP].

James  Redpath wrote a one liner: “we  have nothing between second and eighth” [MTP].
 

November   – Sometime during the month (probably in the first half), G.M. Baker of Boston made a formal group  photograph of Sam, Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw 1818-1885) and  Petroleum V. Nasby (David Ross Locke 1833-1888) [MTP].

February  16 Monday – Sam boarded the packet Paul Jones (353 tons), on its way from Pittsburgh, for passage to New  Orleans, commanded by  Hiram K. Hazlett and piloted by Horace E. Bixby (1826-1912), and Jerry Mason [Branch,  “Bixby” 2]. Branch presents evidence for this date over Apr. 15.

January 23 Friday – In Keokuk, Henry Clemens wrote to Sam.

Your letters seem to be very strongly afflicted  with a lying-in-the-pocket propensity; for no sooner had I read your last, but  one, than it was consigned to one of the pockets of my overcoat, from whose  “vasty depths” I have but this moment fished it up, to answer it.

January – On Dec. 29, 1905 Sam  answered a question from an unidentified person:

“Yes I did lay aside the ‘stick’ to resume  it no more forever; but January 1857 was the time it happened, & Keokuk,  Iowa the place” [MTP]. Note: the “stick” was the typesetter’s line of  type. Sam soon after began his steam boat career.
 

Left  For the Amazon – New Orleans & Change of Plans – Bixby’s Influence

Official  Cub Pilot – Learning the Big Muddy

1857 –  Sometime during his stay in Keokuk Clemens saw Henry Clay Dean (1822-1887), eccentric philosopher who inspired Twain’s 1905  “The War Prayer.” In Ch. 57 of LM, Twain described Dean: