October  18 Saturday – Still in St. Louis, Sam wrote the first Thomas  Jefferson Snodgrass letter, burlesquing Shakespeare’s Julius  Caesar [Gribben 626]. Sam used  dialect, and grammatical and spelling errors to characterize a country bumpkin  getting the worst of it in the big city. It was a literary strategy that would  come to fruition in many of his future works. Snodgrass was also the last pen  name Sam used prior to Mark Twain, in Nevada, Feb. 1863.

End of year – Sam probably left Orion’s employ late in the year to set type across the river in Warsaw, Illinois [MTL 1: 59]. Powers claims that “Sam blew up over phantom wages and quit.” Either it was temporary employment or Sam regretted the move, because he was back in Keokuk in the New Year [Powers, MT A Life 70]. After the birth of his daughter, Orion took on the compiling of Keokuk’s first city directory, leaving the rest of the business operations to Sam

November 30 Friday – Sam’s twentieth birthday.

November – Sam’s uncle John Quarles freed his slave, Uncle Daniel, age 50 [Rasmussen 106].

September 14 Friday – Sam became an uncle for the second time with the birth of Jennie Clemens to Orion and Mollie Clemens [MTL 1: 383].

July 16 Monday – From Sam’s notebook:

“Florida, Mo., 16 July, 55:—Introduced to Miss Jule Violett, Miss Em Tandy, and Miss Em Young”

July, mid – Sam visited Hannibal and traveled to the villages of Paris and Florida to provide care and dispose of family property. In Florida he visited his uncle John Quarles, who had sold the old Quarles Farm. He then continued down river to St. Louis, where he tried to become a Mississippi River cub pilot. Orion had supplied Sam with a letter of introduction to their wealthy cousin, James Clemens, Jr. Sam hoped that James might help him secure an apprenticeship as a cub. Sam had no luck.

June 29 Friday – The Keokuk Dispatch described a man believed by the MTP editors to be Sam:

We know a man in this city who would make a prime editor, and we believe that if he has any “genius” at all, it runs in that direction, “ ‘cos” he says there is not a single paper published in town worth reading—and he says that not one of them has any news—and if he published a paper, he says he would make news, and lots of it, and spirited news, too.

June 27 Wednesday – From Sam’s notebook:

“ …sent out to wash the following: 1 pair heavy Pants; 1 ‘ light do; 4 white Shirts; 4 ’ collars; 2 pair white cotton Socks; 1 summer cravat; 2 white Handkerchiefs; 1 pair twilled Drawers; 1 linen summer Coat/17 [x]. 6/102” [MTNJ 1: 35].

Note: Sam used semicolons in a laundry list! He was a printer. He also loved semicolons.

June 16 Saturday – Sam’s name appeared in a list of unclaimed letters in St. Louis, indicating he had left the city by this date [MTL 1: 58].