In Sam's Boyhood Home - Day By Day

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.

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

Summer – Either this summer or the prior was the last year of annual visits to Quarles Farm near Florida, Mo These visits to the farm where hunting was allowed (the Clemens boys were never allowed guns), food was bountiful, and Sam thought the slaves (who were never sold or split up from families) were the most joyous people in his boyhood [Wecter 91].

Summer, early – Hannibal suffered from a cholera epidemic.

Summer – Sam, now sixteen, swam the Mississippi River to the Illinois side, then turned back and swam back to Hannibal without landing. It was two miles round trip, and on the return leg Sam got a cramp and had to navigate home with only his arms [MTB 57].

Winter of 1846-7 – Now president of the Hannibal Library Institute, John Marshall Clemens worked for the establishment of a Masonic college in Hannibal [Wecter 111].