Robards family.
Archibald Sampson Robards (1797–1862), formerly a plantation owner in
his native Kentucky and an officer in the Fifth Kentucky Regiment, moved to Hannibal with family and slaves in 1843. He became
wealthy in the milling business, and in 1853 his flour won the highest prize at New York’s Crystal Palace Exhibition.
In 1849 he took a company of fifteen to the California gold fields, furnishing the necessary vehicles, provisions and stock.
Robards did much to advance Hannibal’s agricultural, manufacturing, and commercial interests. He was mayor in 1846 and
1854 and an elder in the Christian Church. He married Amanda Carpenter (1807–65), with whom he had six children.
Clemens recalls Robards and five of his children in “Villagers” (see below; see also the note at 100.18). He included the same five—“George, Clay, John Robards
Jane & Sally Robards”—among other old Hannibal acquaintances he listed in his 1902 notebook,
after his final visit to the town (NB 45, CU-MARK, TS p. 21; Marion Census 1850, 317, where the name is entered as Roberts, [begin page 345] as it was
then pronounced; Marion Census 1860, 761; Portrait, 143–44; Holcombe, 945, 991–92; “Flour! Flour! Flour!” Hannibal Journal, 2 May
53).
George C. Robards (1833?–78) is described in Clemens’s autobiography as a “slender, pale, studious” youth with long black hair who was the “only pupil who studied Latin” at Dawson’s school (AD, 8 Mar, 9 Mar 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA, 2:179, 181). In “Villagers” (93, 94), Clemens alludes to Robards’s unhappy romance with Mary Jane Moss and reports his abandonment of Hannibal. Robards returned by 1860, however, for he is listed in the census that year as a Hannibal farmer. He served as a major in the Confederate Army, was a Hannibal real estate and insurance agent in the mid-1870s, and was elected county assessor in 1876 (Marion Census 1850, 317; Marion Census 1860, 761; Holcombe, 992; Portrait, 144; Hallock, 120).
Sarah H. (Sally or Sallie)
Robards (1836–1918), Samuel Clemens’s classmate in Dawson’s school, took piano lessons from Pamela Clemens. She married
river-boat pilot and captain Barton Stone Bowen and,
after Bowen’s death, the Reverend H. H. Haley, a pastor of Hannibal’s Christian Church. In an autobiographical
sketch, Clemens recalled that while in Calcutta in 1896, he met Sally Robards—one of Hannibal’s “dearest
and prettiest girls”—and learned that when they were teenagers she had seen him prancing around nude rehearsing
for his role as a bear in a play (SLC 1900, 1–6, where Robards is called
Mary Wilson, in MTA, 1:125–30). He recalled her in
his 1902 notebook: “Sally Robards—pret[t]y. Describe her now in her youth & again in 50 ys
After when she reveals herself” (NB 45, CU-MARK, TS p. 21). She is mentioned in
“Villagers” (94). Mark Twain’s working notes for
“Schoolhouse Hill” (MSM, 431) indicate that
Sally Fitch (218, 221) was based on her (Marion Census 1850, 317; Marion
Census 1860, 761; Portrait, 144; Holcombe, 981; RoBards 1915; “Mrs.
Haley Is Laid to Rest,” Hannibal Courier-Post, 8 Aug 1918, clipping in RoBards Scrapbooks, vol.
2).
John Lewis Robards (1838–1925), characterized in “Villagers” (93–94), attended Methodist Sunday school with Clemens. At Dawson’s school, where the pair were classmates, Robards always won the silver medal for “Amiability” and Clemens the medal for “Good Spelling” (AD, 7 Feb 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA, 2:67). “I was alway[s] trading Good Spelling for Amiability—for advantage at home,” Clemens recalled (SLC 1898 [bib21479], 7). When he was twelve years old, Robards accompanied his father on the expedition to California. He reportedly “loved to read history and the classics, and early chose to be a soldier, and applied himself diligently for examination at West Point. While thus engaged, being a capital shot, his right eye was impaired by a fragment of a cap of the pistol, and this destroyed his prospects for a successful career” (Holcombe, 992). After attending the University of Missouri and studying law in Louisville, Kentucky, Robards returned to Hannibal in 1861 to practice. Clemens mistakenly notes in “Villagers” that he married “a Hurst—new family.” In April 1861 Robards married Sara (Sallie) Crump Helm, whose family had settled in Hannibal in 1852; the couple had seven children, three of whom lived to adulthood. In 1861 John Robards, Samuel Clemens, and others formed the Marion Rangers, whose misadventures as Confederate irregulars Mark Twain described in “The Private History of a Campaign That Failed” (1885). In that sketch Clemens poked fun at his friend’s practice of spelling his name “RoBards” by portraying him as [begin page 346] a Dunlap who changed his name to “d’Un Lap.” He later regretted the attack: “I think John Robards deserved a lashing, but it should have come from an enemy, not a friend” (SLC to the Reverend John Davis, 19? Apr 87, ViU, excerpted in Wecter 1952, 298 n. 13). Robards was a leading member of Park Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and the founder of Mount Olivet Cemetery. When the bodies of Henry and John Marshall Clemens were transferred from Hannibal’s old Baptist cemetery to Mount Olivet in 1876, Robards oversaw the transfer, and in 1890 he attended the burial service for Jane Lampton Clemens (Portrait, 143–45; Holcombe, 608, 992; RoBards 1915; “RoBards—Sarah Crump Helm. . . ,” St. Louis Christian Advocate, 13 Feb 1908, clipping in RoBards Scrapbooks, vol. 1; “The Death of Mrs. J. L. RoBards,” Hannibal Journal, 4 Jan 1918, clipping in RoBards Scrapbooks, vol. 1; “RoBards Rites to Be Friday,” unidentified Hannibal newspaper, 1925 clipping in RoBards Scrapbooks, vol. 3; AD, 9 Mar 1906, CU-MARK, in MTA, 2:182–83; Wecter 1952, 118–19; “The Funeral of Mrs. Clemens,” unidentified Hannibal newspaper, 30 Oct 90, clipping in Scrapbook 20:126–27, CU-MARK).
Henry Clay Robards (1841?–85), mentioned in “Villagers” (94), was a captain in the Confederate Army. He died in Columbia, Missouri (Marion Census 1850, 317; Portrait, 144).
