Sometime in May or June of 1853 seventeen year old Sam Clemens left home for the first time. He departed the small Mississippi River town of Hannibal, Missouri, later reflected in stories of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, boarded a packet steamer bound for St. Louis, and began a life of travel. Packet steamers were vessels that transported both freight and passengers. Some packets were faster but not so reliable; some were larger but also slower; some were more luxurious, but carried less freight. With the grace of swans on a highway that cost nothing to build, such boats would figure large in Sam’s life.

St. Louis, in the summer of 1853, a city of 100,000 souls, largest city in the West. Sam would stay there and work as a type setter only long enough to make fare for his journey to New York City. On his arrival in New York City he wrote a letter to his mother that provided some explanation for his exit from St. Louis:

Well, I was out of work in St. Louis, and I didn’t fancy loafing in such a dry place, where there is no pleasure to be seen without paying well for it, and so I thought I might as well go to New York. I packed up my “duds” and left for this village, where I arrived, all right, this morning.

August 19, 1853, 11 am, Sam boarded the sidewheeler steamer Cornelia and traveled to Alton, Illinois. Two years later the Cornelia stove and sank, running into a rock at Chain of Rocks, just north of St. Louis.

From Alton, Sam took the train to Springfield. The Alton and Sangamon Railroad, chartered February 27, 1847 in Illinois to connect Alton to Springfield in Sangamon County. The line was finished in 1852. It was the precursor of the Alton Railroad, eventually linking Chicago to Alton, Illinois; St. Louis, Missouri; and Kansas City, Missouri.

The Chicago & Mississippi Railroad would extend the line to Bloomington in 1854 and Joliet 1855, but was not available for Sam’s journey. He would board Frink’s Concord Coach and head for Bloomington. From 1832 until the arrival of the first railroad in 1848, the stagecoaches of Frink, Walker & Co., were the largest company connecting Chicago with the outside world. For several more years stages continued to run regularly, carrying passengers and mail to and from many places not reached by the first railroads.

By 1849 Frink had determined that stagecoaches were being overtaken by the more efficient railroads, so he decided to diversify. He became a major investor in the packet boats on the I&M Canal; one of the first directors of the Chicago and Galena Union Railroad and was on the board of directos for both the Peoria & Oquawaka Rail Road and the Peoria and Bureau Valley Railroad. He died in 1858 just as the railroads were beginning to dominate.

Saturday, August 20, 1853, Sam boarded the Illinois Central to Lasalle, Illinois; the Chicago and Rock Islands railroad took him to Joliet; and, the St Louis, Alton and Chicago took him the rest of the way. He arrived in Chicago at 7:00 p.m.

Sunday, August 21, 1853: Sam departed Chicago, Illinois for Monroe, Michigan on what would in 1855 become the Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana Railroad Company. He wrote that he had the whole day as a layover. Reports are that he departed at 9 p.m. Also, there are reports that he went first to Toledo and then to Monroe. I am dubious of that and believed he went straight through Adrian directly east to Monroe. This may have originated with Ron Powers, repeated by David Fears and included in the Mark Twain Project notes. I suspect the reason for this is that Toledo, in 1855, became the western port for the Lake Erie steamships, supplanting Monroe, and thus the natural destination for those travelling east.

The Southern Railroad, chartered to run from Monroe to New Buffalo, had completed a line from Monroe to Petersburg by 1839, to Adrian by 1840 and Hillsdale by 1843. In 1846 this uncompleted line was sold to the Michigan Southern Railroad Company and the planned western terminal changed to Chicago.

The Northern Indiana Railroad, originally chartered as the Buffalo and Mississippi Railroad Company to run from Maumee Bay (Port Lawrence/Toledo) to The Rapids of the Illinois (Ottawa, Illinois). The company was renamed in 1837 to Northern Indiana Railroad Company.

By 1851 the Northern Indiana Railroad had completed the track from South Bend to White Pigeon, on the state border. Due to lobbying by the Michigan Central Railroad, a competitor of the Michigan Southern, the latter's charter prevented it from going within two miles of the Indiana state line east of Constantine. However the most practical route went closer than two miles west of White Pigeon. To allow for this, Judge Stanfield of South Bend, IN bought the right-of-way from White Pigeon to the state line, and leased it to the railroad company for about 10 years until the charter was modified to allow the company to own it.

In 1852 the Northern Indiana joined with the Michigan Southern to complete the line into Chicago. The two companies would merge in 1855 to form the Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana Railroad. This company would later merge with the Lake Shore Railway, April 6, 1869, to form the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway.

Monday, 22 August. 8:00 a.m., Sam traveled from Monroe, across Lake Erie, to Buffalo, New York, by the steamer Southern Michigan, owned by the Michigan Southern Rail Road Co., a wooden sidewheel Great Lakes passenger and package freight vessel. Built at Buffalo NY by Bidwell & Banta. 1 deck, coal-fired boilers, vertical beam engine. Laid up late in the 1857 season at Monroe MI because of the Panic of 1857. By the time the economy recovered, the railroad lines around Lake Erie had been completed and the large vessels of her type were no longer needed.

In 1852 the Michigan Southern Co. operated six boats -- the Baltic, Golden Gate, Southern Michigan, Northern Indiana, Empire and Empire State. In 1853 they operated three boats: the Southern Michigan, Northern Indiana and Empire State.

In 1854 and 1855 they had four boats; the three last named and the Empire. On May 1, 1855, the Michigan Southern Railway Co. and the Northern Indiana Railway Co. were consolidated and in 1855 and 1856 they built two large steamers -- The Western Metropolis and the city of Buffalo. In the year 1856 they also built the propeller Euphrates.

In 1852, 1853 and 1854 Michigan Southern Company reportedly ran two of their boats between Buffalo and Monroe, Mich. Monroe was the eastern terminus of the Michigan Southern Company. In 1855 they abandoned the line between Buffalo and Monroe and ran their boats between Buffalo and Toledo.

Tuesday, 23 August. 7:00 a.m., Sam departed Buffalo and traveled to Albany via Rochester and Syracuse on the New York Central. Erastus Corning had created the New York Central Railroad Company, from 10 railroad companies between Buffalo and Albany, just three months previous to Sam’s trip. Sam’s letter to his mother provides some color to his trip to New York and also demonstrates the racism he still retained from his Missouri childhood:

The trip, however, was a very pleasant one. Rochester, famous on account of the “Spirit Rappings” was of course interesting; and when I saw the Court House in Syracuse, it called to mind the time when it was surrounded with chains and companies of soldiers, to prevent the rescue of McReynolds’ nigger, by the infernal abolitionists. I reckon I had better black my face, for in these Eastern States niggers are considerably better than white people.

7:00 p.m., en route via the Hudson River to New York City on the steamer Isaac Newton, arriving 5 am August 24,th 1853. A Low Pressure Steamboat “, built in 1846, and larger than any previous river steamer. The vessel consumed four tons of coal per hour. The paddle wheels were 39 feet in diameter and the ship was 338 feet long. The steamer was rebuilt in 1855, extending the length to 405 feet. As was often the case with steamers, the ship’s starboard boiler exploded and on December 5, 1863, when opposite Fort Lee, the liner burned to the water’s edge injuring seventeen people and killing nine.

In New York City: I found board in a sufficiently villainous mechanics’ boarding-house in Duane Street.

Paine reported that Clemens “did not like the board. He had been accustomed to the Southern mode of cooking, and wrote home complaining that New-Yorkers did not have ‘hot-bread’ or biscuits, but ate ‘light-bread,’ which they allowed to get stale, seeming to prefer it in that way”

 He found employment at John Gray’s printing house on the East River side of lower Manhattan, it was about a ten-block walk across town to Duane Street near Broadway on the West Side, where Clemens lived and boarded. Broadway was notably wider than the typical “little, narrow street” of lower Manhattan; it was also packed with carts, hacks, coaches, and omnibuses, not to mention pedestrians.

Sam relocated to Philadelphia in October of 1853 presumably taking the 2:00 p.m. Express Line (cost, three dollars) to Philadelphia. This trip lasted four and a half hours: by steamboat from New York to South Amboy, New Jersey, and from there by rail to Camden, and by ferry across the Delaware River to the wharf at Walnut Street

I came here from New York by way of the Camden and Amboy railroad—the same on which the collision occurred some time since. I never thought of this till our train stopped, “all of a sudden,” and then began to go backwards like blazes. Then ran back half a mile, and switched off on another track, and stopped; and the next moment a large passenger train came round a bend in the road, and whistled past us like lightning! Ugh! ejaculated I, as I [looked] to see if Mr. [Clemens’s] bones were all safe. If we had been three seconds later getting off that [track], the two locomotives would have come together, and we should no doubt have been helped off. The conductors silenced all questions by not answering them.

ISam’s employment in Philadelphia consisted of substituting temporarily for one or another of the Inquirer’s (Jesper Harding’s Pennsylvania Inquirer and National Gazette, the city’s largest morning newspaper) regular compositors. Under this system, which was used only on newspapers, he was paid on a piecework basis, although probably at somewhat higher rates than a compositor could earn in a book and job office.

I can get subbing every night of the week. I go to work at 7 o’clock in the evening, and work till 3 o’clock the next morning. I can go to the theatre and stay till 12 o’clock, and then go to the office, and get work from that till 3 the next morning; when I go to bed, and sleep till 11 o’clock, then get up and loaf the rest of the day. 

Sam took a ride around Philadelphia on an omnibus from the Exchange, where]the different lines originate. From here they radiate to the different[parts of the city. Sam boarded the Fairmount stage, paid my sixpence, or “fip,” as these[heathen call it, and started. We rolled along till we began to[get towards]the out-skirts of the city, where the prettiest part of a large city always is.

Twenty-nine omnibus routes (utilizing 275 four- and six-horse coaches) radiated from the Merchants’ Exchange and Post Office Building at Walnut, Dock, and Third streets, near the Camden and Amboy ferry slip.

Sam was impressed by the large houses he passed. One house, which looked like a public building, was built entirely of great blocks of red granite. The pillars in front were all finished but one. These pillars were[beautiful]ornamented fluted columns, considerably larger than a hogshead at the[base,]and[about as high as Caplinger’s second story front windows… ]I despise [the infernal bogus brick columns, plastered over with mortar.]This marble is the most beautiful I ever saw... It takes a very high polish. Some of it is as black as Egypt, with thin streaks of white running through it, and some is a beautiful snowy white; while the most of it is magnificent black, clouded with white.

We arrived at Fairmount,—got out of the stage, and prepared]to look around. The hill, (Fairmount) is very high, and on top of it is the great reservoir. After leaving the stage, I passed up the[road, till I came to the wire bridge which stretches across the Schuylkill ...]. This is the first bridge of the kind I ever saw. Here I saw, a little above, the fine[dam, which[holds back the water for the use of the Water Works. It forms a nice water-fall. Seeing a park at the foot of the hill, I entered—and found it one of the nicest little places about. Fat marble Cupids, in big marble vases, squirted water upward incessantly.

I always thought the eastern people were patterns of uprightness.; but I never before]saw so many whisky-swilling, God-despising heathens as I find in this part of the country. I believe I am the only person in the Inquirer office that does not drink. One young fellow makes $18 for a few weeks, and gets on a grand “bender” and spends every cent of it.

February of 1854, Sam visited Washington DC: Alighting from a railcar at the Italianate-styled Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Passenger Depot, which had just opened months before at the corner of New Jersey Avenue and C Street NW, Sam found a hotel room. On the morning of February 17, he hit the city streets for the first time, walking through a snowstorm. “I started toward the capitol, but there being no sidewalk, I sank ankle deep in mud and snow at every step. When at last I reached the capitol, I found that Congress did not sit till 11 o’clock; so I thought I would stroll around the city for an hour or two.”

The Treasury Building is a pretty edifice, with a long row of columns in front, and stands about a square from the President’s house. Passing into the park in front of the White House, I amused myself with a gaze at Clark Mill’s great equestrian statue of Jackson. It is a beautiful thing, and well worth a long walk on a stormy day to see.2 The public buildings of Washington are all fine specimens of architecture, and would add greatly to the embellishment of such a city as New York—but here they are sadly out of place looking like so many palaces in a Hottentot village

I passed into the Senate Chamber to see the men who give the people the benefit of their wisdom and learning for a little glory and eight dollars a day. The Senate is now composed of a different material from what it once was. Its glory hath departed. Its halls no longer echo the words of a Clay, or Webster, or Calhoun. They have played their parts and retired from the stage; and though they are still occupied by others, the void is felt.

If there is anything in Washington, worth a visit, it is the Museum of the Patent Office. It is free to visitors at all times of the day, and is by far the largest collection of curiosities in the United[States. The]first story of this magnificent[building]is occupied by the models of patents. The second story is occupied by the museum. I spent a very pleasant four hours in this part of the building, looking at the thousands upon thousands of wonders it contains.

 The United States Patent Office Building was modeled on the Parthenon. At this time, in addition to the Patent Office, it housed the Department of the Interior and the National Museum 

Little is known of Sam’s time following his visit to Washington D.C., a period for which no letters have been discovered. His visit to Washington, D.C., probably lasted only a long weekend, from 16 through 20 February (or possibly through Washington’s birthday) 1854.

He returned to Philadelphia, where he “worked for a time on the Ledger and North American., then likely returned to New York” two weeks later.

Unemployment among New York printers was high, at least in part the result of the destruction by fire of two major publishing houses, Harper and Brothers and George F. Cooledge and Brothers, in December 1853. Forty-five years later Clemens acknowledged that he had been “obliged by financial stress” to return hom. In 1906 Clemens described his return trip: “I went back to the Mississippi Valley, sitting upright in the smoking-car two or three days and nights. When I reached St. Louis I was exhausted. I went to bed on board a steamboat that was bound for Muscatine. I fell asleep at once, with my clothes on, and didnt’ wake again for thirty-six hours”.