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.

February 24 Monday – Hannibal, Mo. was granted a city charter [Hannibal Courier-Post, Mar. 6, 1935 p10b].

January 24 Friday – Sam witnessed the premeditated murder of “Uncle” Samuel Smarr (1788?-1845), shot at close range by William P. Owsley. Smarr was carried into the drugstore of Dr. Orville Grant, the very house that poverty would soon force the Clemens to move into. Sam squeezed into the room where they laid the dying Smarr and watched [Wecter 106]. Note: The scene would be grist for Colonel Sherburn’s cold-blooded killing of Boggs, the town drunk, in chapters 21-22 of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

November 30 Saturday – Sam’s ninth birthday (he didn’t want to be called “Sammy” any longer.) In his 1906 Autobiography, Sam claimed to be a private smoker from age nine, and a public one after his father’s death, in 1847 [Neider 43].

September 14 Saturday – Henry, a Negro, was tried and convicted in Judge Clemens’ court of “menacing” with a knife. State law prohibited slaves from having weapons. John Marshall Clemens found Henry guilty and imposed punishment of 20 lashes to be given publicly. Dempsey writes, “Nine-year-old Sam liked to play about Hannibal on pretty fall days. A public whipping would have been high entertainment in 1844 Hannibal” [54].

October 22 Tuesday – Sam watched worshippers from the Millerite sect (led by William Miller) wrap themselves in robes and climb the steep hill to Lover’s Leap, expecting the world to end. In his visit back to Hannibal in 1902, Sam and pal John Briggs (1837-1907) went up Holliday’s Hill and pointed over the valley.

“There is where the Millerites put on their robes one night to go up to heaven. None of them went that night John but no doubt many of them have gone since” [Wecter 89].

Summer – A measles epidemic swept through Hannibal. Sam’s mother was obsessed with keeping her children from contracting the disease, but Sam decided to expose himself. Sam snuck into his friend Will Bowen’s house and bedroom. He was discovered and chased away, but tried again and slipped into bed with Will. Rediscovered by Will’s angry mother, Sam was taken home, but contracted measles. “I have never enjoyed anything in my life any more than I enjoyed dying that time” [Powers, Dangerous 85].

December – The Clemens family moved out of the Virginia House and into 206 Hill Street, which forever more would be considered Sam’s boyhood home. Sam shared a second-story bedroom with his brother Henry [Powers, MT A Life 34].

November 30 Thursday – Sam’s eighth birthday.

Late Fall – On Mar. 11, 1883 the N.Y. Times, p.4 ran an article, “Judge Clemens” and attributed it from “Communication to the St. Louis Missouri Republican.” The article described John Marshall Clemens as a “stern unbending man of splendid common-sense, and was, indeed, the autocrat of the little dingy room on Bird-street, where he held his court” [as Justice of the Peace]. An excerpt: