Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer among the Indians

by Twain, Mark

  MOFFETT, WILLIAM ANDERSON (WILL) (1816–65), was Clemens’s brother-in-law. In 1835 or 1836 William and his brother Erasmus moved from their native Virginia to Florida, Missouri, where they found jobs in a grocery. In the early 1840s the brothers moved to Hannibal and with partner George Schroter opened a general store. William moved to St. Louis in the spring of 1851 and established Moffett, Stillwell and Company, a firm of commission merchants; after that partnership dissolved in 1855, he formed a commission business with his old partner, Schroter. On 20 September 1851 he married Pamela Ann Clemens, with whom he had two children: Annie E. (1852–1950) and Samuel Erasmus (1860–1908). In the spring of 1857, Moffett loaned Clemens the $100 initial payment for his apprenticeship as a river pilot, and Clemens often stayed with the Moffetts in St. Louis during his piloting years. Moffett died in St. Louis, leaving Pamela a widow at age thirty-seven. In his autobiography, Clemens recalled Moffett as “a merchant, a Virginian—a fine man in every way” (AD, 29 Mar 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA, 2:289). “Villagers” (105) includes a less flattering description (Bible 1862; Marion Census 1850, 306; Webster 1918, 1–2; “We direct attention . . . ,” Hannibal Missouri Courier, 3 Apr 51; MTBus, 19, 26, 33, 36, 38; Portrait, 579).

  Moss family.

  RUSSELL W. MOSS (b. 1810?), a native of Kentucky, entered the meat packing business in 1850 with William Samuel, and their firm, situated on Hannibal’s levee, reputedly was the second largest pork and beef packing house in the United States. Moss is described as “rich” in “Villagers” (94; see also the note at 100.18). He and his wife, Mary (b. 1816), also from Kentucky, had six children; the two oldest are mentioned in “Villagers” (Marion Census 1850, 312; “Mammoth Packing House,” Hannibal Western Union, 14 Nov 50; Holcombe, 903).

  MARY JANE MOSS (b. 1832?) was “the ‘belle of Hannibal’ ” (Anna Laura Hawkins Frazer to SLC, 16 Mar 1909, CU-MARK). She was friendly with Pamela Clemens and frequently visited the Clemens home. “It was not deemed proper in Hannibal in the 40’s for a young woman to go down Main street unaccompanied by an older person,” and Mary Moss used “to stop at the Clemens house at the head of the street to beg Jane Clemens, always good company for both old and young, to go along with her shopping” (Brashear 1935). In 1854 she married lawyer ROBERT F. LAKENAN—“to please her parents, not herself,” Mark Twain recalled in his autobiography (AD, 9 Mar 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA, 2:182). In “Villagers” (93, 94) Clemens also comments on Mary Moss’s unhappy marriage (Marion Census 1850, 312; Holcombe, 609, 610).

  CORNELIUS (NEIL) MOSS (b. 1836) attended Sunday School with Clemens at the Old Ship of Zion Methodist Church and later was a classmate at DAWSON’s school. According to “Villagers” (94), by age thirty, after studying at Yale, Moss was “a graceless tramp in Nevada.” He evidently was the destitute schoolmate whom Clemens met in Virginia City and wrote about in chapter 55 of Roughing It (1872):

  [He] came tramping in on foot from Reese River, a very allegory of Poverty. The son of wealthy parents, here he was, in a strange land, hungry, bootless, mantled in an ancient horse-blanket, roofed with a brimless hat, and so generally and so extravagantly dilapidated that he could have “taken the shine out of the Prodigal Son himself,” as he pleasantly remarked. He wanted to borrow forty-six dollars—twenty-six to take him to San Francisco, and twenty for something else; to buy some soap with, maybe, for he needed it.

  In an 1863 letter to his family, Clemens wrote that Moss had recently left San Francisco to work a mining claim in Coso, California: “He says he has had a very hard time ever since he has been in California—has done pretty much all kinds of work to make a living—keeping school in the country among other things” (18? May 63, L1, 252). In chapter 5 of The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894), Mark Twain assigned some of Neil Moss’s experiences to Tom Driscoll, who is ridiculed when he returns home from Yale flaunting Eastern fashions (Marion Census 1850, 312).

  N., Miss. See MARY ANN NEWCOMB.

  NASH family.

  ABNER O. NASH (1804?–59) opened one of Hannibal’s first general stores in 1831, when there were fewer than a dozen families living in the area. He was elected to the town’s first Board of Trustees, later was its president, and was a founding member of the Presbyterian Church. He declared bankruptcy in 1844, and in 1849 accepted the low-paying postmastership. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) alludes to him as “the aged and needy postmaster, who had seen better days” (chapter 5). Twice married, Nash and his second wife, Andosia, had six children residing with them in 1850. Nash is mentioned in “Villagers” (96). Mark Twain’s working notes for “Tom Sawyer’s Conspiracy” (HH&T, 383) indicate that postmaster Oliver Benton (166) was modeled after him (Marion Census 1850, 318; Greene, 281; Wecter 1952, 298 n. 15).

  MARY NASH (b. 1832?) was the postmaster’s daughter by his first marriage. In his autobiography, mistakenly calling her Mary Lacy (the name of another schoolmate), Clemens claimed she was one of his early infatuations but was “out of my class because of her advanced age. She was pretty wild and determined and independent. She was ungovernable, and was considered incorrigible. But that was all a mistake. She married, and at once settled down and became in all ways a model matron and was as highly respected as any matron in the town. Four years ago she was still living, and had been married fifty years” (AD, 16 Mar 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA, 2:213). In “Villagers” (96) Clemens wonders if Mary Nash had married SAMUEL R. RAYMOND; she actually married John Hubbard of Frytown in 1851. On her fiftieth wedding anniversary she sent Clemens a greeting and he responded with congratulations. Working notes show that he considered portraying her as “wild” Mary Benton, the daughter of postmaster Oliver Benton, in “Tom Sawyer’s Conspiracy” and as “bad” Louisa Robbins in “Schoolhouse Hill,” but the characters do not appear in the stories (HH&T, 383; MSM, 431). In his characterization of Rachel (“Hellfire”) Hotchkiss (119–33), Mark Twain may have drawn on his recollection of Mary Nash (Marion Census 1850, 318, 319; “Married,” Hannibal Western Union, 23 Jan 51; SLC to Mary Nash Hubbard, 13 Jan 1901, MoHM).

  THOMAS S. (TOM) NASH (b. 1835?), Mary’s half brother, was one of Clemens’s playmates, a Cadet of Temperance, and a fellow pupil in SAMUEL CROSS’s school. In his autobiography Clemens recalled the winter night when he and Tom skated on the Mississippi, with Tom falling through the ice; the accident led to “a procession of diseases” culminating in scarlet fever, which left Tom deaf (AD, 12 Feb 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA, 2:97–98). In working notes for the “St. Petersburg Fragment,” an early version of his “Mysterious Stranger” tale, Mark Twain wrote that “Tom Nash’s mother took in a deserted child; it gave scarlet-fever death to 3 of her children & deaf[ness] to 2” (MSM, 416). In the Jacksonville, Illinois, asylum for the deaf and dumb, Tom learned to talk in a loud unmodulated voice. He returned to Hannibal in 1849, worked in the post office for four years, was apprenticed to WILLIAM T. LEAGUE of the Hannibal Messenger, and in later years was a house and sign painter. When Clemens returned to Hannibal in 1902, “old and white headed” Tom Nash greeted him at the train station, made a trumpet of his hands at Clemens’s ear, nodded toward the crowd, “and said, confidentially—in a yell like a fog horn—‘Same damned fools, Sam’ ” (AD, 12 Feb 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA, 2:98–99). Clemens recalls Nash in “Villagers” (96). His working notes show that he considered portraying Nash as Jack Benton in “Tom Sawyer’s Conspiracy” and as Frank Robbins in “Schoolhouse Hill” (HH&T, 383; MSM, 431), but the characters do not appear in the stories (Marion Census 1850, 318; Cadets of Temperance 1850; Thomas S. Nash to SLC, 23 Apr 85, CU-MARK; Fotheringham, 44; Stone, Davidson, and McIntosh, 163).

  NEWCOMB, MARY ANN (1809–94), was one of Clemens’s schoolteachers. Born in Vermont and educated in the East, she traveled west to join the faculty of Marion College, near Palmyra, Missouri, but settled in Florida instead. She ran a school there and became acquainted with the Clemens family. In 1839 she moved to Hannibal. Apparently Mary Newcomb’s Select School was Clemens’s second school, after ELIZABETH HO
RR’S. Class was conducted in the basement of the Presbyterian church on Fourth Street, between Bird and Hill streets. Advanced students were taught in half of the room by Miss Newcomb, younger students in the other half by Miss TORREY. Miss Newcomb became a boarder in the Clemens house, taking her noon meal and sometimes her evening meal there. Her two granddaughters claimed that when Clemens visited Hannibal in 1902 he said “I owe a great deal to Mary Newcomb, she compelled me to learn to read.” Their grandmother “often commented on Mark Twain’s drawl” and recalled the Clemens family as “delightful”:

  Mark Twain’s mother, Mrs. Jane Clemens, was an intellectual woman, blessed with abounding good humor and a ready wit which her son Sam, inherited. His father, John M. Clemens, was a courteous, well-educated gentleman, Miss Newcomb said. Never a practical man, but an energetic dreamer, he was a good conversationalist. Although the family was usually in less than moderate circumstances, she never heard any grumbling when she visited them. (“Former Florida Neighbor of Clemens Family Head of School Attended Here by Mark Twain,” Hannibal Evening Courier-Post, 6 Mar 1935, 12B)

  In the late 1840s Miss Newcomb married widower JOHN DAVIS. Mark Twain’s working notes for “Autobiography of a Damned Fool,” an unfinished story written in 1877, indicate she was the model for Mrs. Bangs, “a very thin, tall, Yankee person, who came west when she was thirty, taught school nine years in our town, and then married Mr. Bangs. . . . She had ringlets, and a long sharp nose, and thin, colorless lips, and you could not tell her breast from her back if she had her head up a stovepipe hole looking for something in the attic” (S&B, 140, 163). Miss Newcomb was the prototype for Miss Watson, the widow Douglas’s stern spinster sister, who is characterized in chapter one of Huckleberry Finn and mentioned in “Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer among the Indians” (33) and “Tom Sawyer’s Conspiracy” (134, 187, 201, 208). Working notes for “Schoolhouse Hill” (MSM, 432) indicate that she was the model for Miss Pomeroy (237). In “Letter to William Bowen” and “Villagers” (21, 95, 96), Clemens refers to her by name and as “Miss N.” (Marion Census 1850, 320–21; Gregory 1965, 31).

  OSCAR. see ORION CLEMENS.

  OUSELEY. see OWSLEY.

  OWSLEY, WILLIAM PERRY (b. 1813), was the Hannibal merchant who shot SAM SMARR. He was a member of an extensive and well-to-do Kentucky family; a distant cousin, also named William Owsley, was governor of Kentucky from 1844 to 1848. He married Almira Roberts and by the mid-1830s had settled in Marion County. Owsley was the father of six children, two of whom, Elizabeth (Bettie) and Anna (Nannie), were classmates of Clemens’s in JOHN D. DAWSON’s school. He shot Smarr in 1845, at the corner of Hill and Main streets, just a few yards from the Clemens home. Nine-year-old Samuel Clemens saw Smarr die, and justice of the peace John Marshall Clemens took depositions of twenty-nine witnesses. Smarr, a farmer, believed Owsley had stolen two thousand dollars from a friend, and in the weeks prior to the shooting denounced Owsley as “a damned pick pocket” and “the damnedest rascal that ever lived in the county.” Reportedly Smarr said, “I dont like him, and dont want him to put himself in my way, if he does ever cross my path I will kill him.” About a week before the shooting, Smarr walked up and down the street past Owsley’s store, calling out “O yes! O yes, here is Bill Owsley, has got a big stock of goods here, and stole two thousand dollars from Thompson in Palmyra.” His companion, Tom Davis, joined in the abuse of Owsley and fired his pistol once or twice in the street. When Owsley learned the cause of the commotion, it “appeared to affect him a good deal, he had a kind of twitching and turned white around the mouth, and said it was insufferable, and he could not stand it.” Several other townsmen warned Owsley that his life had been threatened and in the week that followed observed him grow increasingly moody and absent-minded. On the afternoon of 22 January 1845, Smarr, who had come into town to sell some beef, was walking down Main Street with Joseph Brown. In Brown’s own words:

  Mr. Owsley came up behind us and approaching Mr. Smar said to the best of my recollection “You Sam Smar.” Mr. Smar turned round, seeing Mr. Owsley in the act of drawing a pistol from his pocket, said Mr. Owsley dont fire, or something to that effect. Mr. Owsley was within about four paces of Mr. Smar when he drew the pistol and fired twice in succession, after the second fire, Mr. Smarr fell, when Mr. Owsley turned on his heel and walked off. (Missouri v. Owsley)

  Smarr was carried into Orville R. Grant’s drugstore and laid on the floor, his opened shirt exposing a bullet hole. He died in about half an hour. When the case was brought to trial a year later, Owsley was successfully defended by SAMUEL TAYLOR GLOVER. Although Clemens says in “Villagers” (101) that “he presently moved away,” Owsley kept his shop on Main Street until June 1849, when he sold the business and left for California. In 1853 he was back in Hannibal, working as a dry goods clerk. When Clemens visited Hannibal in 1902, “he dined and spent a few hours very pleasantly” at the home of Owsley’s daughter Elizabeth (“Mark Twain Going Home,” Hannibal Morning Journal, 3 June 1902). Clemens fictionalized the murder of Smarr in chapter 21 of Huckleberry Finn, where Colonel Sherburn kills “old Boggs,” and later recalled Smarr’s death in an autobiographical sketch (SLC 1900, 7, in MTA, 1:131). He mentions the incident in his “Letter to William Bowen” and “Villagers” (21, 101). Working notes for “Schoolhouse Hill” (MSM, 431) indicate that schoolgirl Margaret Stover (221) was modeled after one of the Owsley children—probably Elizabeth (Marion Census 1850, 323; Owsley, 28, 29, 133; AD, 8 Mar 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA, 2:179; Missouri v. Owsley for all details and witness testimony regarding the shooting; Holcombe, 276, 901; Wecter 1952, 106–9; “O! For California! New Firm,” Hannibal Missouri Courier, 31 June 49; Hagood and Hagood 1986, 101; advertisement for Rayburn’s dry goods store, Hannibal Journal, 5 May 53; John and Elizabeth Owsley Hatch to SLC, 15 Oct 1909, CU-MARK; SLC to Elizabeth Owsley Hatch, 23 Oct 1909, CtHMTH).

  PAVEY family.

  JESSE H. PAVEY (1798?–?1853), a native of Kentucky, was the proprietor of Pavey’s Tavern, near the corner of Main and Hill streets in Hannibal. He and his wife, Catharine (b. 1800?), had at least eight children: MARY J. (see MARY J. SHOOT), Julia, JOSEPHINE, Sarah, NAPOLEON W. (POLE), REBECCA (BECKY), Fanny, and Susan. By the summer of 1850 Pavey had resettled his family in St. Louis, where he worked as a carpenter. In 1855, when Clemens worked in St. Louis as a journeyman printer, he boarded at the widowed Mrs. Pavey’s home. In an August 1897 notebook entry, which tentatively lists characters for “Hellfire Hotchkiss,” Clemens included “The tavern gang—at Pavey’s,” and in a 1902 notebook he recalled, “Becky Pavey & Pole ‘Pig-tail done’ tavern Bladder-time. Weeds” (NB 42, CU-MARK, TS p. 24, in S&B, 173; NB 45, CU-MARK†, TS p. 21). (Pigtail and bladder, two types of prepared tobacco, were evidently manufactured at the tavern.) Clemens describes a confrontation between his mother and Jesse Pavey in “Jane Lampton Clemens” (84), and in “Villagers” (98) he condemns Pavey’s laziness and bad temper (Hannibal Journal, 7 Jan 47, locating Pavey’s Tavern on Second (i.e., Main) near Hill, cited by Dixon Wecter in his annotated copy of MTB, 1:27, CU-MARK; St. Louis Census 1850, 416:291; James Green 1850, 270; Morrison, 197; SLC to Laura Hawkins Frazer, ca. Feb 1909, Hannibal Evening Courier-Post, 6 Mar 1935, 3C; Varble, 219, 221; SLC to Frank E. Burrough, 15 Dec 1900, MoCgS; N&J1, 37).

  JOSEPHINE PAVEY (b. 1828?), mentioned in “Villagers” (99), married FRANCIS DAVIS, the partner of livery keeper WILLIAM SHOOT (Marion Census 1850, 312; Holcombe, 903).

  NAPOLEON W. (POLE) PAVEY (b. 1833?), characterized in “Villagers” (98–99), was the “notoriously worldly” boy described at length in the first installment of “Old Times on the Mississippi” (1875), later chapter 4 of Life on the Mississippi (1883): he left Hannibal for a long time, then “turned up as apprentice engineer or ‘striker’ on a steamboat” and swaggered around town “in his blackest and greasiest clothes, so that nobody could help remembering that he was a steamboatman. . . . This fellow had money, too, and hair oil. . . . No girl could withstand his charms. He
‘cut out’ every boy in the village.” Pavey is listed as a steamboat engineer, “Second Class,” in the 1857 St. Louis city directory (St. Louis Census 1850, 416:291; Kennedy 1857, 171, 304).

  REBECCA (BECKY) PAVEY (b. 1835?) is recalled in “Villagers” (99) as a heartbreaker (see also the note at 99.6–7). She married George Davis, the stepson of her sister JOSEPHINE (St. Louis Census 1850, 416:291; Marion Census 1850, 312).

  PEAKE, WILLIAM HUMPHREY (b. 1775?), was one of John Marshall Clemens’s few intimates. When Mark Twain visited Hannibal in 1902, he told a reporter that “he remembered old Dr. Peake better than almost any of the Hannibal citizens of fifty years ago. He described Dr. Peake as a Virginian, who, on state occasions, wore knee breeches and large silver buckles on his low cut shoes, and wore a wig. He, Judge Draper and the elder Clemens, Sam’s father, were subscribers for the Weekly National Intelligencer, published at Washington, D.C., and it was their custom to discuss the speeches made in Congress from the time the paper was received until the next copy came to hand” (“Good-bye to Mark Twain,” Hannibal Courier-Post, 3 June 1902, 1). In his autobiography, Mark Twain similarly recalled Peake, who “had great influence and his opinion upon any matter was worth much more than that of any other person in the community.” He remembered the time he made the skeptical doctor a believer in mesmerism: when pretending to be hypnotized, he recited details of Peake’s past which the old man did not remember revealing to him (AD, 1 Dec, 2 Dec 1906, CU-MARK, in MTE, 124–28). Peake is mentioned three times in “Villagers” (93, 102, 104). Working notes for “Schoolhouse Hill” (MSM, 432) indicate that the oracular Dr. Wheelright (235, 238) was based on him (Marion Census 1850, 326; Hannibal Gazette, 1 July 47, cited in Wecter 1950, 1).