Ratcliffe (or Ratcliff) family. The father, James (1795?–1860), a pioneer physician in Hannibal, had an affluent practice, sat on the first municipal board of health, and owned one of the best houses in town. (In historical records of Marion County his surname also appears as Ratliff and Rackliff.) Will records show that Ratcliffe was survived by his second wife and five sons. Aside from the account given in “Villagers” (102–3), little is known of this family. In the 1880s Mark Twain wrote about the homicidal Ratcliffe son in “Clairvoyant” (29), and in his 1905–8 notebook he recalled the “Ratcliffe family—crazy. One, confined, chopped his hand off; chased stepmother with knife” (NB 48, CU-MARK, TS p. 10). Mark Twain apparently drew on one of the Ratcliffe men in creating Crazy Meadows, the village lunatic with the “wild mad laugh” in “Schoolhouse Hill” (242–46); a marginal note on the manuscript reads: “Crazy’s history and misfortunes and his family and lost boy—Ratcliff” (MSM, 411; Holcombe, 897; Wecter 1952, 198; Marion Census 1850, 309; Ellsberry 1965 [bib20416], 5).
