Sam’s father caught him in a lie. John Marshall Clemens did not often punish his children, for his stern mien often did the trick. The family had made one or two moves since coming to Hannibal, and Sam recalled his father’s punishment in a house they’d only been in a year. During 1843 Sam’s father was building the family a new house [MTB 44]. Some sources site 1844 for the move in.

Sam attended his second Sunday school in the basement of the Presbyterian Church. The first had been for two or three years prior in “a shabby little brick Methodist church on the public square called the Old Ship of Zion” [Wecter 86].