August – Hannibal slave dealer William Beebe sued and gained a judgment against John Marshall Clemens for $126.50 stemming from debts for the store [Wecter 112].

Summer – Cholera claimed 30 lives in Hannibal. Many fled the town [Wecter 213].

March 14 Saturday – William P. Owsley, was acquitted of murdering Samuel Smarr by a Palmyra jury. [Wecter 108].

November 30 Sunday – Sam’s tenth birthday.

November 6 Thursday – Record of Jimmy Finn’s death [MTP].

Fall – In either 1844 or 1845, Sam left the dame school for a “good common school” on Center Street near the town square, taught by a middle-aged Irishman, William O. Cross [Powers, D. Waters 93].

August 25-26 Tuesday – The Philadelphia North America reported on Aug. 26, “Affray at Hannibal, Mo.”—a fight between Dr. Orville R. Grant and a man named Railey, who stabbed Grant with a spear attached to his cane. In his Dec. 2, 1906 A.D. Sam recalled the man’s name as Dr. Reyburn [AMT 2: 590].

August 24 Sunday – In Hannibal, John Marshall Clemens wrote to Orion in St. Louis. He enclosed a course of twenty oral lectures on grammar by Professor Hull. John was taking Hull’s class and promised to outline the material and send it on to Orion, who might benefit in the printer’s trade from such lessons. Sam was nearly ten years old and probably received the same instruction at home [MTBus 9-10].

Summer – Sam stowed away on a steamboat headed south. He was found by a crewmember and put ashore thirty miles down river, at the town of Louisiana, Mo. There he spent the night with Lampton relatives. The next day they returned him home.

March 19 Wednesday – From the Hannibal, Mo. Library web site: “In 1840 many citizens of Hannibal, Missouri felt a need for a public library. Judge John Marshall Clemens (Mark Twain’s father), Zachariah Draper (1798-1856), Dr. Hugh Meredith, and Samuel Cross (1812-1886) took on the responsibility of this task. They organized the Hannibal Library Institute. On March 19, 1845 this library was chartered by the General Assembly of Missouri. The books were kept in Dr. Meredith’s office in a building at the corner of Main and Bird Streets. This was not a free library.