November 6 Friday – In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to the Redding Court. “This is to certify that I have examined & identified as my property the silver taken from my house by force in the early morning of September 18, 1908. / Respectfully submitted to the honorable Court” /… [MTP].

Sam also wrote to an unidentified man.

Dear Sir: / I note this passage in the letter sent you by Mr. Ashley:

Spring and Summer – Sam clerked in a grocery store until he was fired for eating too much sugar. He enrolled at Dawson’s School a few weeks after the death of his father. He worked many odd jobs during these months. He clerked for a bookstore, delivered newspapers, helped out at a blacksmith’s, and even studied law, but gave it up “because it was so prosy and tiresome” [Ch. 42 of Roughing It; Wecter131].

In his Dec. 2, 1906 A.D., Clemens recalled their house:
In 1847 we were living in a large white house on the corner of Hill and Main streets—a house that still stands, but isn’t large now, although it hasn’t lost a plank; I saw it a year ago and noticed that shrinkage. My father died in it in March of the year mentioned, but our family did not move out of it until some months afterward. Ours was not the only family in the house, there was another, Dr. Grant’s [AMT 2: 301].

Hard times forced the family to move in with Dr. Orville R. Grant’s family (above Grant’s Drug store; Grant 1815?-1854). Jane Clemens cooked for both families in exchange for rent. For more on the Grant family see AMT 2: 590].

John Marshall Clemens led a civic group organizing a rail line from Hannibal to St. Joseph. The line was chartered and completed twelve years after his death.

1845 – From Sam’s Autobiography:
I recall Mary Miller. She was not my first sweetheart, but I think she was the first one that furnished me with a broken heart. I fell in love with her when she was eighteen and I nine—but she scorned me, and I recognized this was a cold world….I soon transferred my worship to Artimisia Briggs, who was a year older than Mary Miller. When I revealed my passion to her she did not scoff at it. She did not make fun of it. She was very kind and gentle about it. But she was also firm, and said she did not want to be pestered by children.

Hannibal by 1844 took pride in four general stores, three sawmills, two planing mills, three blacksmith shops, two hotels, three saloons, two churches, two schools, a tobacco factory, a hemp factory, and a tan yard, as well as a flourishing distillery up at the still house branch. West of the village lay “Stringtown,” so called because its cabins and stock pens were strung out along the road. Small industry was the lifeblood of the town [Wecter 60].

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.

Sammy’s Idyllic Childhood – Summers at Quarles Farm – First Schooling
Brother Benjamin Died – Family Moved to Hill Street House – Murder Witnessed
Many Adventures – Cholera, Measles and Death – John Marshall Clemens Died
Sam the Printer’s Devil

First half of year – The Clemens family moved to their third house in Florida, Mo. Wecter says “probably before the birth of their youngest child, Henry Clemens, on June 13” [Wecter 49]. They sold their second Florida house to John Quarles for a sum that reflected settlement of unpaid debts from the dissolved store partnership [49].

February – Big plans were afloat for developing the area. The Missouri Legislature appointed John Marshall to head a commission of six members to promote a Florida & Paris railroad. The same Legislature also encouraged John Marshall, together with John Adams Quarles (1802-1876), Dr. Hugh Meredith and others to found a school to be called The Florida Academy [Varble 125]. An educational foundation was set up with Marshall and Quarles as trustees.