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Owsley, William Perry (b. 1813), was the Hannibal merchant who shot Sam Smarr. He was a member of an extensive and well-to-do Kentucky family; a distant cousin, also named William Owsley, was governor of Kentucky from 1844 to 1848. He married Almira Roberts and by the mid-1830s had settled in Marion County. Owsley was the father of six children, two of whom, Elizabeth (Bettie) and Anna (Nannie), were classmates of Clemens’s in John D. Dawson’s school. He shot Smarr in 1845, at the corner of Hill and Main streets, just a few yards from the Clemens home. Nine-year-old Samuel Clemens saw Smarr die, and justice of the peace John Marshall Clemens took depositions of twenty-nine witnesses. Smarr, a farmer, believed Owsley had stolen two thousand dollars from a friend, and in the weeks prior to the shooting denounced Owsley as “a damned pick pocket” and “the damnedest rascal that ever lived in the county.” Reportedly Smarr said, “I dont like him, and dont want him to put himself in my way, if he does ever cross my path I will kill him.” About a week before the shooting, Smarr walked up and down the street past Owsley’s store, calling out “O yes! O yes, here is Bill Owsley, has got a big stock of goods here, and stole two thousand dollars from Thompson in Palmyra.” His companion, Tom Davis, joined in the abuse of Owsley and fired his pistol once or twice in the street. When Owsley learned the cause of the commotion, it “appeared to affect him a good deal, he had a kind of twitching and turned white around the mouth, and said it was insufferable, and he could not stand it.” Several other townsmen warned Owsley that his life had been threatened and in the week that followed observed him grow increasingly moody and absent-minded. On the afternoon of 22 January 1845, Smarr, who had come into town to sell some beef, was walking down Main Street with Joseph Brown. In Brown’s own words:
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Mr. Owsley came up behind us and approaching Mr. Smar said to the best of my recollection “You Sam Smar.” Mr. Smar turned round, seeing Mr. Owsley in the act of drawing a pistol from his pocket, said Mr. Owsley dont fire, or something to that effect. Mr. Owsley was within about four paces of Mr. Smar when he drew the pistol and fired twice in succession, after the second fire, Mr. Smarr fell, when Mr. Owsley turned on his heel and walked off. (Missouri v. Owsley)
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Smarr was carried into Orville R. Grant’s drugstore and laid on the floor, his opened shirt exposing a bullet hole. He died in about half an hour. When the case was brought to trial a year later, Owsley was successfully defended by Samuel Taylor Glover. Although Clemens says in “Villagers” (101) that “he presently moved away,” Owsley kept his shop on Main Street until June 1849, when he sold the business and left for California. In 1853 he was back in Hannibal, working as a dry goods clerk. When Clemens visited Hannibal in 1902, “he dined and spent a few hours very pleasantly” at the home of Owsley’s daughter Elizabeth (“Mark Twain Going Home,” Hannibal Morning Journal, 3 June 1902). Clemens fictionalized the [begin page 340] murder of Smarr in chapter 21 of Huckleberry Finn, where Colonel Sherburn kills “old Boggs,” and later recalled Smarr’s death in an autobiographical sketch (SLC 1900, 7, in MTA, 1:131). He mentions the incident in his “Letter to William Bowen” (21) and “Villagers” (101). Working notes for “Schoolhouse Hill” (MSM, 431) indicate that schoolgirl Margaret Stover (221) was modeled after one of the Owsley children—probably Elizabeth (Marion Census 1850, 323; Owsley, 28, 29, 133; AD, 8 Mar 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA, 2:179; Missouri v. Owsley for all details and witness testimony regarding the shooting; Holcombe, 276, 901; Wecter 1952, 106–9; “O! For California! New Firm,” Hannibal Missouri Courier, 31 June 49; Hagood and Hagood 1986, 101; advertisement for Rayburn’s dry goods store, Hannibal Journal, 5 May 53; John and Elizabeth Owsley Hatch to SLC, 15 Oct 1909, CU-MARK; SLC to Elizabeth Owsley Hatch, 23 Oct 1909, CtHMTH).