Garth family. Clemens knew two sons of tobacco and grain merchant John Garth (1784–?1857) and his wife, Emily (d. 1844?) (Portrait, 776–77; Hagood and Hagood 1985, 29).
David J. Garth (1822–1912) in
the 1850s became Hannibal’s leading manufacturer of tobacco. Clemens recalled in his autobiography that Garth sold one
extremely cheap brand of cigar known as “Garth’s damndest”: “He had had these in stock a good many
years, and although they looked well enough on the outside, their insides had decayed to dust and would fly out like a puff of
vapor when they were broken in two” (AD, 13 Feb 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA,
2:101). Garth was Clemens’s Sunday school teacher at the First Presbyterian Church. By 1862 he had moved to New York
City, where he established Garth, Son & Company, a nationwide chain of tobacco warehouses and wholesale houses. Garth
is mentioned in “Letter to William Bowen” (21) and
“Villagers” (95, 101). Mark Twain’s working notes for “Schoolhouse Hill” (MSM, 432) include “Kaspar Helder (poor little German cigar 
(Garth’s
d—dest),” but the story mentions neither the character nor the cigar (Marion Census 1850, 317; Greene, 96d; Portrait, 776; “David J. Garth Dead at 90 Years,”
New York Times, 19 July 1912, 9).
John H. Garth (1837–99), Clemens’s close friend, attended Missouri State University, then worked in the family’s Hannibal tobacco company. He married another childhood friend of Clemens’s, Helen V. Kercheval, and in 1862 moved to New York City, where he worked with his brother in the tobacco business. Nine years later he returned to Hannibal and was active in various enterprises—banking, the lumber business, and manufacturing. When Clemens visited Hannibal in May 1882, he was the Garth’s guest at “Woodside,” their 600-acre estate just outside of town. Although Clemens says in “Villagers” (101) that the Garths raised three children, Hannibal histories mention only two, Anna and John David. Working notes for “Schoolhouse Hill” (MSM, 432) show that Jack Stillson (219) was modeled after John Garth (Portrait, 776–77; Greene, 271; MTB, 3:1332; John H. Garth to SLC, 7 July 83, CU-MARK; Hagood and Hagood 1986, 246).
