How Samuel Clemens Headed West and Became Mark Twain

On this episode of Our American Stories, Old West historian Roger McGrath is here to tell the story of a time before the world knew Samuel Clemons by his pen name, Mark Twain. The time he spent in the American West helped Clemens develop a distinctive Western voice and provided him with material that would make him America’s first celebrity author.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is our American Stories. And the next story is
about a writer well whose name you know, but whose
story you may not. This is the story of a
time before the world knew Samuel Clemens by his pen
name Mark Twain. The time he spent in the American
West helped Clemens develop a distinctive Western voice and provided

(00:30):
him with material that would make him America's first celebrity author.
Here to tell the story of Samuel Clemens's life in
the Old West is Roger McGrath. McGrath is the author
of Gunfighters, High Women, and Vigilantes, Violence on the Frontier.
A US marine and former history professor at UCLA, Doctor
McGrath has appeared on numerous History Channel documentaries, and he's

(00:52):
a regular contributor for us. Here in our American Stories,
here's McGrath.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
Whose people knows Sam Clemens as Mark Twain, the author
of Tom Swear and Huckleberry Finn. They have no idea
that as a young man he spent the eighteen sixties
in the mining camps of Nevada and California. And it
was in those camps he wrote professionally for the first time.
Who was also in those camps that he learned from

(01:19):
older writers a style of writing common to the frontier West,
and adopted that style for his own. A book came
out of his experiences on the frontier, which is little
known but maybe his best work. Roughing it. Sam Clemens
was born in Florida, Missouri, in November eighteen thirty five.

(01:43):
Is the sixth of seven children, three of whom die
in childhood. His parents are of Scotch, Irish, Cornish, and
the English descent. The family moves to Hannibal, Missouri, a
port on the Mississippi, when Sam is four. There's regular
river traffic in and out of the port, and there
are pioneers passing through the town on their way west.

(02:07):
From a young age, Clemens understands there is a larger
world outside of Hannibal. When Clemens is eleven, his father,
an attorney and judge, dies Less than a year later,
Clemens drops out of school and is apprenticed to a printer.
Clemens soon becomes an accomplished typesetter, working long hours during

(02:31):
the day and reading in a library at night. When
he is thirteen, he watches one of his friends depart
for California in the Gold Rush of eighteen forty nine,
Clemens later describes a scene I still remember the parts
are of the cavalcade when it spurred westward. We were

(02:52):
all there to see and to envy. And I can
still see the proud little chap sailing by in a
great horse. We were all on hand to gaze and envy.
When he returned two years later in unimaginable glory, for
he had traveled. None of us had ever been forty

(03:12):
miles from home, but he had crossed the continent. He
had been in the gold mines, that fairyland of our imagination.
We would have sold our souls to Satan for the
privilege of trading places with him. Clemens continues working as
a type center until eighteen fifty seven, when he meets

(03:35):
Horace Bixby, a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River. For
a price, Bixby agrees to take on Clemens as an
apprentice pilot, or what's called a cub pilot. After training
under Bixby for two years, Clemens receives his pilot's license
and begins serving on the steamer ab chambers. It's a

(03:59):
prestigious job and the pay is good, but in eighteen
sixty one, the Civil War erupts, closing most steamboat traffic
on the Mississippi. At the same time, Sam Clemens gets
his chance to go west, a dream since childhood. His
older brother, Orion, is a practicing attorney and a vigorous

(04:21):
supporter of Abraham Lincoln's campaign for president. Orion closes his
wall office and stumps throughout Missouri in behalf of Lincoln.
When Lincoln becomes president, Orion is appointed secretary of the
newly created Territory of Nevada. Orion has a problem, though

(04:44):
his months of campaigning for Lincoln have exhausted his personal savings.
Orion asks Sam to finance his trip to Nevada. Sam
agrees if Orion takes him along and gives him a job.
Oriyan reckins he will need a private secretary and Sam

(05:05):
can be the secretary. Sam pays four hundred dollars for
the stagecoach fair for the two of them from Saint Joseph,
Missouri to Carson City, Nevada. The cost is more than
fifteen thousand and today's dollars. The company that operates the
line is the Central Overland, California and Pike's Peak Express Company.

(05:30):
The company is owned by William Russell Alexander Majors and
William Waddell. They become famous not only for their stagecoach
service to California, but also for their creation of the
Pony Express. On July twenty sixth, the Clemens brothers climb
aboard a Central Overland stagecoach and begin a seventeen hundred

(05:54):
mile journey over the Great Plains, through the Rocky Mountains,
and across the Greats into Carson City. Sam is dressed
in a woolen shirt and pants and high top boots.
He carries a Smith and Western Revolver, which he hasn't
practiced much with, but he feels bully and is ready

(06:16):
for his grand adventure. Sam and Orion are among the
first to take a stagecoach over the Central Route, surface
begins only a week before their departure. The coaches used
by the company are the famous Conquered, which weigh nearly
a ton and are pulled by six horse teams. The

(06:37):
Conquered gives its passengers a relatively smooth ride. Suspension is
provided by two thick leather straps called thoroughbraces, that run
between the coach's axles and suspend the coach's body. Passengers
experience a rolling motion and not the jolting ride of

(06:58):
a wagon. Udable run for a team of horses is
ten to thirteen miles. Teams are then changed at what
are called swing stations. Every fourth station is a home station,
where not only are teams changed, but also drivers. For

(07:19):
passengers such as Sam Clemens and his brother Orion, there
is no turning in. The overland stage runs on and
around the clock schedule to make the trip from Saint
Joseph to Sacramento in twenty days in average speed of
ten miles per hour. Passengers get out to stretch their
legs at each station and to eat at home stations,

(07:42):
but other than that they live on the stagecoach. Approaching
a home station in Wyoming, Sam begins to hear stories
about a division superintendent named Jack Slade. Sam's told that
Slade has killed more than twenty men, not county Indians.
Slade had one old enemy, Jules Bennie, tied to a

(08:05):
post in a station kraw. Slade had almost died from
bullets he suffered when ambushed by Benny, so he was
now going to kill Benny slowly. First, Slade cut off
Benny's ears for souvenirs. Slade allowed Benny to suffer earless
at the post for hours, and then Slade began taking

(08:28):
target practice on his old enemy. One of Slade's bullets
took off one of Benny's fingers, another round tore flesh
off Benny's leg, and a third bullet ripped flesh off
Benny's arm. Slade kept firing until Bennie begged to be
put out of his misery. Slade then sent a bullet

(08:51):
through Benny's head. Now, who do you suppose happens to
be at the home station? Sam Clemens is approaching, Yes,
than Jack Slade. When the stagecoach reaches the station, Sam,
his brother Ryan, and the other passengers sit down to
eat breakfast with, as Sam says, a half savage, half

(09:14):
civilized company of armed and bearded mountaineers, ranchmen, and station employees.
Sam winds up seated right next to Jack Slade himself. Oh,
Sam doesn't know it at first. Then someone calls Slade
by name, and Sam almost collapses, says, Sam never has

(09:38):
youth stared and shivered as I did when I heard
them call him Slade.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
And you've been listening to Roger McGrath tell the story
of Samuel Clemens in the West. When we come back
more of this remarkable storytelling here on our American stories,

(10:09):
and we continue here with our American stories. And now
let's return to Roger McGrath and continue with the story
of Samuel Clemens in the Old West.

Speaker 2 (10:21):
Much Sam's surprise, he finds Slade gentlemanly and pleasant. Nonetheless,
Sam maintains a healthy fear. When the coffee is nearly
gone and Slade is about to take last cup, Slade
notices that Sam's cup is empty. Slade politely offers to
fill Sam's cup, but Sam, though he wants another cup,

(10:44):
quickly and politely declines the offer. Says Sam, I was
afraid he had not killed anybody that morning and he
might be needing diversion. Slade insists on filling Sam's cup.
I thanked him and drank it, says Sam. But it
gave me no comfort, for I could not feel sure

(11:04):
that it would not be sorry presently that he had
given it away and proceeded to kill me to distract
his thoughts from the loss. Because Orion Clemens, as the
new Secretary of Nevada Territory, has to meet with territorial
officials of Utah territory. Sam gets to spend a couple

(11:25):
of days in Salt Lake City. He's greatly impressed with
the Mormon splendid city they have built from scratch, but
not so much with the Book of Mormon. West of
the Great Salt Lake, the stagecoach rolls across a barren
level plain before entering Nevada and coming to the Humboldt River.

(11:46):
Here are the travelers come upon a tribe of Shoshone
Indians called ghos Chute. Sam's not greatly impressed with the
goo Chute, saying they are very considerably inferior to even
this spy digger Indians of California, and inferior to all
races of savages on our continent. And those are the

(12:09):
nicest things he says about the ghot Chute. On the
nineteenth day out from Saint Joseph, Missouri, including the two
days layover in Salt Lake City, Sam Clemens finds himself
in the waterless forty mile Desert, which lies between the
Humboldt Sink and the Carson River in Nevada. As Sam

(12:31):
Clemens describes it, the coach wheel sunk from six inches
to a foot. We worked our passage most of the
way across. That is to say, we got out and walked.
It was a dreary pull, and a long and thirsty one,
for we had no water. From one extremity of this

(12:52):
desert to the other, the road was white with the
bones of oxen and horses. It would hardly be an
exaggeration to say that we could have walked the forty
miles and set our feet on a bone at every step.
The desert was one prodigious graveyard, and the log chains,

(13:14):
wagon tires, and rotting wrecks of vehicles were almost as
thick as the bones. On the afternoon of the twentieth
day of the overland journey, the stagecoach rolls into Carson City,
the capital of Nevada Territory, earlier known as washhow the

(13:36):
area is in the midst of a boom because of
two great strikes, one at Virginia City and the other
at Aurora. Nevada Territory's first governor is James Nye. Before
his appointment, he was an attorney in New York and
a major general in the state militia. He was also
very active in Republican politics in New York during the

(13:58):
eighteen fifties, He brings several of his old political allies
with them to Nevada to fill various jobs. He also
brings Bridget Murphy, a motherly, talented, energetic, and fearless proprietor
of a boarding house in New York City. She sets
up a boarding house in Carson City, and most of

(14:18):
NY's brigade moves into it, including Sam and Ryan Clemens.
They call the boarding house the Ranch. While May is
trying to place all those of the boarding house and
official jobs, he keeps them busy with various make work jobs,
including surveying a possible railroad route. On the survey job,

(14:39):
they run into tarantula's again and again and begin to
take the big eariye spiders back to the boarding house,
keeping them under glass tumblers in large dormitory like bedroom.
Sam Clemens hates the sight of them. Late one night,
a tremendous wind sends a portion of a roof slamming

(15:00):
into the side of the boarding house. A shelf with
a dozen tumbler covered tarantulas crashes to the floor. Turned
out boys, yells one of the boarders. The tarantulas are loose.
Sam Clemens describes the scene in the dark room. No

(15:21):
warning ever sounded so dreadful. Nobody tried to leave the
room lest they might step on a tarantula. Every man
groped for a trunk or a bed and jumped on it.
Then followed the strangest silence, a silence of grisly suspense.
It was too waiting, expectancy fear. It was dark as pitch,

(15:45):
and one had to imagine the spectacle of those scant
clad men roosting gingerly on trunks and beds. Sam Clemens
doesn't say how long all the men remained frozen in place,
but it does say different men at different times or
certain a tarantula is crawling over them, and no one

(16:06):
was willing to cross the floor to light a lantern.
Suddenly the door of the room swings open, and there's
Missus Murphy with a lantern in her hand. She shakes
her head in disgust, and fourteen grown men sheepishly climbed
down from their perches on boxes, trunks, and beds. During

(16:29):
the next several months, Sam prospects for gold in various
mining districts and tries to take a claim on timberlands
on the shores of Lake Tahoe, early in eighteen sixty two,
Sam and several of his friends set off for Aurora,
the newest strike in Nevada, with a slouch hat on
his head and high top boots on his feet. Wearing

(16:51):
a woolen shirt and trousers, and armed with a Colt revolver,
Sam looks the part of a prospector. He doesn't think
you will have occasion to use the gun, but says
he carries it in deference to popular sentiment and an
order that I might not, by its absence, be offensively

(17:13):
conspicuous and a subject of remark. In Aurora, Sam begins
writing professionally under the non g bloome Josh. He writes
several pieces for the Esmrale The Star, one of the
town's two daily newspapers. He also starts sending articles describing

(17:33):
events in Aurora to the Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City,
again as Josh. Sam does some mining, but most of
the time he's found in one or another of Aurora's
many saloons, sipping whiskey and telling stories. He's a gifted
storyteller and always has an audience. Meanwhile, Cal Higbee, Sam's

(17:59):
trustee partner, who has been prospecting from sun up to
sundown strikes a vein of ore. That night, the two
men talk of the riches that await them, says Sam Hickey,
and I went to bed at midnight, But it was
only until I brought awake and think dream scheme. The floorless,

(18:20):
tumble down cabin was a palace. The ragged gray blankets silk,
the furniture rosewood and mahogany, each new splendor that burst
out of my visions of the future, whirled me bodily
over in bed, or jerked me to a sitting buster,
just as if an electric battery had been applied to

(18:40):
me by a complicated series of events. Clemens and Hickby
lose the claim, and their dreams of becoming millionaires are dashed.

Speaker 1 (18:50):
And you're listening to Roger McGrath tell the story of
Samuel Clemens and my goodness. At thirteen years old, he
watches in awe as another young man departs for gold
Rush Territory. And why was he in awe? Well, Clemens
said it best before he had traveled. When we come
back more of this remarkable story. Roger McGrath on Samuel

(19:13):
Clemens in the West, Here on our American stories, and

(19:38):
we continue here with our American stories and Roger McGrath
telling the story of Samuel Clemens and his time spent
in the American West. By the way, if you've read
Hawk Finn and loved it, do read roughing it because
it is as good as Ulesses S. Grant's memoir. It's
that good. And if you haven't read Grant's memoir, pick
it up. You won't put it down, you'll thank me.

(20:01):
Let's continue with McGrath.

Speaker 2 (20:04):
After six months in Aurora, Sam gives up on mining
and leaves for Virginia City. In September eighteen sixty two,
Sam Clemens walks into the Territorial Enterprise office, introduces himself
to Irishman Dennis McCarthy, the co owner and editor of

(20:24):
the newspaper, and says, my name is Clemens, and I've
come to write for the paper. The Territorial Enterprise is
Nevada's first and most important newspaper. By the early eighteen sixties,
it has supplanted the Sacramento Union as the miner's bible.

(20:44):
The Enterprise wields enormous influence not only in Virginia City
but throughout the West. It's read on every mining frontier.
The paper is full of hard, factual news, but its
reporters are allowed to indulge themselves on paper. They then
become essayists, poets, philosophers, humorists. They pen stories about imaginary

(21:07):
mining strikes or mining disasters, or about anything that strikes
their fancy. The co owners and editors of the Territorial Enterprise,
Dennis McCarthy and Joe Goodman, tell the writers they are
free to write anything they want on page three, but
they must take personal responsibility for any explosive reaction by

(21:29):
the public. As a result of this policy, the newspaper
becomes a training school for original and versatile writers. The
one who achieves the greatest prominence in success is Sam Clemens,
although it's by his new non diplume Mark Twain that
he gains fame. Sam takes the name from his River

(21:52):
Pilot days, when Dick Hans called out depth readings. Each
mark is six feet or one fathom, tweening is two
fathoms or twelve feet, the depth needed for safe passage
of the typical steamboat. Sam first attaches the name to
one of his Territorial Enterprise articles in February eighteen sixty three.

(22:17):
Sam's first of many tongue in cheek pieces with the
Territorial Enterprise appears in October eighteen sixty two. Titled Petrified Man,
Sam describes the discovery of the man's body perfectly petrified,
that is put on display by a local politician in
front of a crowd of onlookers. The petrified man's arms

(22:41):
at hands are in a position suggesting he's thumbing his
nose at the world, and one eye appears to be winking.
Newspapers throughout the country get the story by way of
the telegraph and reprinted as straight news. In reality, none
of it's true, but it's Sam's way of poking fun

(23:03):
at the politician and his gillible constituents. Or such tall
tales come from Sam's pen, but most of his work
consists of solid factual reporting, especially on the territorial legislature
in Carson City. He has a nose for sniffing out
corruption and incompetence and lights and exposing it in vitriolic prose.

(23:28):
He makes friends and he makes enemies. After several challenges
to duels, he decides to take a permanent vacation. He
arrives in San Francisco in May eighteen sixty four and
spends money freely, certain that his mining stock will allow
him many months of frivolity. However, his stock plunges and

(23:51):
he is forced to take a job with the San
Francisco daily newspaper, The Morning Call. The work is hard
and mostly routine, and he's not allowed his flights of fancy.
After too many months of what Sam considers drudgery with
The Call, the editor tells him he has literary talents

(24:12):
beyond a simple reporting job and fires him. Sam now
convinces the Territorial Enterprise that he should be the San
Francisco correspondent for the newspaper. Sam's paint handsomely and again
has allowed great latitude. This also allows him to remain
in San Francisco and continue to be part of a

(24:33):
literary circle of talented and aspiring young writers who include
Woking Miller and Brett Hart. Sam also makes trips to
California's mother Load Country, staying in old mining camps with
such colorful names as Jackass Hill, Angels Camp, Rough and Ready,

(24:54):
Red Dog, gold Hill, and Fiddletown. He needs many veteran
sour doughs from the gold Rush of eighteen forty nine
and is regaled with stories from the first days of
the Great Strike. One of these tales is about a
jumping frog. Sam sees the makings of a great story

(25:15):
and takes notes. A few weeks later, Sam has a
story written and sends it to a publisher in New York.
What would become commonly known as the celebrated Jumping Frog
at Calaveras County appears in November eighteen sixty five in

(25:35):
the Saturday Press. It's an instant sensation and is reprinted
in various publications across the United States. Suddenly, Mark Twain
is a household name. With his elevated status, Sam convinces
the Sacramento Union newspaper to send him to Hawaii as

(25:57):
a correspondent. He arrives in March eighteen sixty six, and
for the next four months sends stories about the islands
to California. One of his stories captures the attention of
the entire nation. Sam happens to be on the spot
when survivors of a forty three day or dal at

(26:18):
sea in lifeboat are brought ashore. They are sailors from
the ship Hornet, which caught fire in the Pacific and sank.
When Sam returns home, he finds himself in great demand.
Managed by Dennis McCarthy, is editor from the Territorial Enterprise.
Days Sam begins a lecture tour that takes them to

(26:40):
not only sold out venues in San Francisco and Sacramento,
but to packed venues in one mining camp after another
in the Motherload Country and over the Sierras to Carson City,
Gold Hill, and Virginia City. He travels hundreds of miles
in stagecoaches and is greeted as a celebrity at every stop.

(27:05):
In the final days of his lecture tour, Sam has
a practical joke played on him that he would have
enjoyed immensely were he not the victim of it. After
lecturing to a standing room only crowd in Gold Hill,
he and Dennis McCarthy began the two mile walk back
to their lodgings in Virginia City. About midnight, they reached

(27:27):
the desolate hilltop divide between the two towns line and
wait for them are a group of old friends, masked
and disguised, the order stand and deliver rings out, and
a half dozen men with guns drawn to send on
Clemens and McCarthy. The would be robbers wave their revolvers

(27:51):
in Sam's face, says Sam, don't flourish those pistols so
promiscuously they might go off by accident. Sam begins to
reach in his pockets for his money, but has told
to reach for the sky. As soon as he puts
his hands up, he's tole to pull out his money.

(28:12):
This goes on for another round. Sam doesn't realize it's
the joke, and exasperated asks how he's supposed to get
his money if he's reaching for the sky. By now,
the robbers are all about to burst out laughing, so
they dig through Sam's pockets while he holds his hands high,

(28:32):
pick up a satchel of silver coins the proceeds from
the Knight's lecture that McCarthy had been carrying, and hastily depart,
telling Clemens McCarthy to remain in position for fifteen minutes
were their hands high. None the wiser Sam gets a
story in the next day's Territorial Enterprise about the dastardly

(28:55):
robbery by six highwaymen on the divide. Later, he has
all the money returned to him and learns it was
all a practical joke. Sam is steamed and remains a
high dudgeon until he leaves for San Francisco. A couple
of days later. Late in eighteen sixty seven, Sam Clemens

(29:18):
decides it's time to return to the East. He soon
marries and settles in Connecticut. His days in the Old
West drover, but his time on the frontier created his
writing style and gave him enough material for a lifetime
of stories most Americans today. No, Mark Twain was once

(29:41):
a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi, but most Americans know
nothing of as many years of roughing it on the
wild and wooly frontier.

Speaker 1 (29:54):
And great job is always to Greg for producing that
piece into Roger McGrath and again, the author of Gunfighters,
Hoywiman and Vigilantes Violence on the Frontier, a former US Marine,
and of course a history professor at UCLA, one of
the best there. The story of Samuel Clemens in the
Old West. Here on our American Stories