Levering family. Alice and Franklin Levering came to Hannibal in 1841 (Marion Census 1850, 307; Holcombe, 962). Clemens knew their two oldest children.
Clint Levering (1837?–47), a playmate of Clemens’s, died at the age of ten. While “bathing with a number of his playmates, [he] was carried beyond his depth, [begin page 332] and in spite of the exertions of those who were with him, was drowned” (Hannibal Gazette, 20 Aug 47, in Wecter 1952, 169). In chapter 54 of Life on the Mississippi (1883), where he called Clint “Lem Hackett,” Mark Twain described the terrified reaction of the village boys, who were encouraged to view Clint’s death as divine retribution for sinfulness. In his 1897 notebook, he wrote that the drowning was regarded as “a judgment” on Clint and his parents because Clint’s great-grandmother had given protection to two Jewish boys “when they were being chased & stoned” (NB 41, CU-MARK, TS p. 59); in the notebook entry, however, he mistakenly calls the drowned boy “Writer” (i.e., “Righter”), the name of Clint’s younger brother. Clint Levering’s drowning is mentioned in “Letter to William Bowen” (20) and in “Villagers” (101).
Aaron Righter Levering (1839–1912), referred to in “Villagers” (101), was a Cadet of Temperance with Clemens. At thirteen he began work in a hardware store and at twenty started his own hardware business. In 1870 he helped to organize the Farmers’ and Merchants’ Bank of Hannibal, and became the cashier. A deacon in the Fifth Street Baptist Church, he was for many years a Sunday school superintendent and public school director. When Clemens visited Hannibal in 1902, he attended a reception at the Farmers’ and Merchants’ Bank where he was greeted by Levering and fellow bank officers John Lewis Robards and William R. Pitts (Holcombe, 962, 1064; Hagood and Hagood 1986, 252 n. 7; Cadets of Temperance 1850; “The Farmers & Merchants Bank,” Hannibal Courier-Post, 22 Apr 1905, 1; “Mark Twain Sees the Home of His Boyhood,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 30 May 1902, 1).
