Pavey family.
Jesse H. Pavey (1798?–?1853), a native of Kentucky, was the proprietor
of Pavey’s Tavern, near the corner of Main and Hill streets in Hannibal. He and his wife, Catharine (b. 1800?), had at
least eight children: Mary J. (see Mary J. Shoot), Julia, Josephine, Sarah,
Napoleon W. (Pole), Rebecca (Becky), Fanny, and Susan. By the summer of 1850 Pavey had resettled
his family in St. Louis, where he worked as a carpenter. In 1855, when Clemens worked in St. Louis as a journeyman printer, he
boarded at the widowed Mrs. Pavey’s home. In an August 1897 notebook entry, which tentatively lists characters for “Hellfire Hotchkiss,” Clemens included “The tavern
gang—at Pavey’s,” and in a 1902 notebook he recalled, “Becky Pavey & Pole 
‘Pig-tail done’ tavern Bladder-time. Weeds” (NB 42,
CU-MARK, TS p. 24, in S&B, 173; NB 45, CU-MARK, TS p. 21).
(Pigtail and bladder, two types of prepared tobacco, were evidently manufactured at the tavern.) Clemens describes a
confrontation between his mother and Jesse Pavey in “Jane Lampton Clemens” (84), and in “Villagers” (98) he condemns
Pavey’s laziness and bad temper (Hannibal Journal, 7 Jan 47, locating Pavey’s Tavern on
Second (i.e., Main) near Hill, cited by Dixon Wecter in his annotated copy of MTB, 1:27, CU-MARK; St. Louis Census 1850, 416:291; James Green
1850, 270; Morrison, 197; SLC to Laura Hawkins Frazer, ca. Feb 1909,
Hannibal Evening Courier-Post, 6 Mar 1935, 3C; Varble,
219, 221; SLC to Frank E. Burrough, 15 Dec 1900, MoCgS; N&J1, 37).
Josephine Pavey (b. 1828?), mentioned in “Villagers” (99), married Francis Davis, the partner of livery keeper William Shoot (Marion Census 1850, 312; Holcombe, 903).
Napoleon W. (Pole) Pavey (b. 1833?), characterized in “Villagers” (98–99), was the “notoriously worldly” boy described at length in the first installment of “Old Times on the Mississippi” (1875), later chapter 4 of Life on the Mississippi (1883): he left Hannibal for a long time, then “turned up as apprentice engineer or ‘striker’ on a steamboat” and swaggered around town “in his blackest and greasiest clothes, so that nobody could help remembering that he was a steamboatman. . . . This fellow had money, too, and hair oil. . . . No girl could withstand his charms. He ‘cut out’ every boy in the village.” Pavey is listed as a steamboat engineer, “Second Class,” in [begin page 341] the 1857 St. Louis city directory (St. Louis Census 1850, 416:291; Kennedy 1857, 171, 304).
Rebecca (Becky) Pavey (b. 1835?) is recalled in “Villagers” (99) as a heartbreaker (see also the note at 99.6–7). She married George Davis, the stepson of her sister Josephine (St. Louis Census 1850, 416:291; Marion Census 1850, 312).
