Meredith family.
Hugh Meredith (1806–64), recalled in “Villagers” (93), was born in Pennsylvania. He was the Clemens family’s physician in Florida and Hannibal, Missouri. Meredith and John Marshall Clemens were active in planning improvements for both towns, and in 1844 both helped found the Hannibal Library Institute. Dr. Meredith joined the Gold Rush in 1849, but returned home early in 1851. He took charge of Orion Clemens’s Hannibal Journal for several weeks during the winter of 1851/52, while Orion was in Tennessee attending to the Clemens family’s property there. In his autobiography Clemens recalled the occasion when Orion—making a surprise visit to Hannibal, but unaware that Meredith’s family was living in the Clemenses’ former house—unwittingly climbed into bed with the doctor’s “two ripe old-maid sisters” (AD, 28 Mar 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA, 2:272–74; Marion Census 1850, 326; Gregory 1965, 31; Wecter 1952, 55, 111, 116–17, 241–42; Brashear 1934, 200 n. 11; “We received . . . ,” Hannibal Missouri Courier, 3 Jan 50; “Returned Californians,” Hannibal Western Union, 9 Jan 51; “Dr. Hugh Meredith . . . ,” Hannibal Western Union, 3 Apr 51).
Charles Meredith (b. 1833?), mentioned in “Villagers” (93), was born in Pennsylvania and was the oldest of the doctor’s five children. He once saved Clemens from drowning in Bear Creek. In 1849–51 he traveled to the California gold fields with his father, and in the spring of 1852 made a second trip west (Marion Census 1850, 326; SLC 1903, 3; Hagood and Hagood 1986, 91; “From the Plains,” Hannibal Missouri Courier, 24 June 52).
John D. Meredith (1837–70), mentioned twice in “Villagers” (93, 96), was born in Missouri. He was a Cadet of Temperance with Clemens. Orion Clemens taught the trade of printing to one of Dr. Meredith’s sons—probably John, who made printing his profession and in the late 1850s worked for the Hannibal Messenger. In his autobiography Samuel Clemens recalled Meredith as “a boy of a quite uncommonly sweet and gentle disposition. He grew up, and when the Civil War broke out he became a sort of guerrilla chief on the Confederate side, and I was told that in his raids upon Union families in the country parts of Monroe County—in earlier times the friends and familiars of his father—he was remorseless in his devastations and sheddings of blood” (AD, 9 Mar 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA, 2:185; Marion Census 1850, 326; Hagood and Hagood 1986, 128; Cadets of Temperance 1850; Orion Clemens 1880–82, 4; Fotheringham, 41).
