Fife, Matthew S. (b. 1810?), mentioned in “Villagers” (93), was editor of several Hannibal newspapers in the early 1840s, including the
Hannibal Journal, where Orion Clemens served his printer’s apprenticeship before moving to St.
Louis about 1842. Fife also was Jane Clemens’s dentist. In his 1897 notebook Clemens recalled him in conjunction with Dr.
Hugh Meredith and Mrs. Utterback, a faith healer who
twice cured his mother of a toothache: “Mrs. Utterback cured Ma. Dr. Fife pulled her teeth
Dr Meredith—hoarse deep voice” (NB 41, CU-MARK, TS p. 61). By
the mid-1850s Fife had settled in St. Louis, where he worked as a wholesale shoe dealer (Holcombe, 899, 987; SLC 1897–98, 63–64, in MTA, 1:108; St. Louis Census 1860, 651:184; Knox, 58; Kennedy 1859, 160; Edwards 1867, 333).
