Pitts family.
James P. Pitts (b. 1807?), a harness maker, moved to Hannibal in 1836. In “Villagers” (102) Clemens recalls how Pitts greeted every steamboat even though he had no business to conduct at the landing. In chapter 55 of Life on the Mississippi (1883), written fifteen years before “Villagers,” Clemens attributed this behavior to John Stavely, another Hannibal saddler. Evidently Life on the Mississippi was correct: one history of Hannibal comments on “John W. Stavely, who came here in 1842” and whose regular and conspicuous appearance at the wharf led neighboring towns to call Hannibal “Stavely’s Landing” (Greene, 71; Holcombe, 971; Marion Census 1850, 307, 314; N&J2, 478 n. 160).
William R. (Bill) Pitts (b. 1832?), James’s son, at fourteen began a six-year apprenticeship in the harness-maker and saddler’s trade, which he completed in four years by working overtime. From the age of twenty, he ran his own business, retiring in 1890. He served twice on the city council and helped to found the Farmers’ and Merchants’ Bank in 1870. Clemens met him on two return visits to Hannibal, in April 1867 and in May 1902. He mentions Bill Pitts in his “Letter to William Bowen” (21) and in “Villagers” (102). Mark Twain’s working notes indicate that he planned to portray Pitts as Jake Fitch in “Tom Sawyer’s Conspiracy” and as George Pratt in “Schoolhouse Hill” (HH&T, 383; MSM, 431), but neither character appears in the [begin page 342] stories (Marion Census 1850, 314; Holcombe, 971; Greene, 398, 407; “Mark Twain Sees the Home of His Boyhood,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 30 May 1902, 1).
