To Emma Parish
29 August 1874 • Elmira, N.Y.
(MS facsimile: Memphis Commercial Appeal, date unknown, UCCL 01121)

Elmira, N. Y. Aug 29.

My Dear Cousin:

My mother has settled this kinship question happily, & I am very glad; for to tell you ‸the‸ plain truth we are running pretty short of kin. Except the Saunders’s, who might as well be in Jericho as Kentucky, for all the comfort they are to us, & a cousin in Texas, who might as well be in Heaven & done with it, I would not know where to rake up a relative for breakfast if I were starving.1 So I am glad enough of th‸is‸ us lucky reinforcement. And you can see that my mother is; I told you she was an enthusiast on genealogy; I wonder she did not discover you before you did her.2

“Livy” is my wife. My mother lives in Fredonia, N.Y., is 71, & pretty strong yet. Now you must send your family photographs, & I’ll rake our tribe together & forward to you. I would now, but the mail waits.

Cordially Yr Cousin

S. L. Clemens.

Explanatory Notes

Editorial Signs

Click to add citation to My Citations.

1 Clemens had numerous living relatives, including, in Kentucky, his father’s half-sister, Mary (Polly) Hancock Saunders (1812–93); her husband, William H. Saunders (1812–85); and Mary Ann Pamela Xantippe Bryon (Tip) Saunders (1838–1922), William’s daughter by his first marriage, to Mary Saunder’s sister, Ann Hancock (1810–41). The most recent documented Saunders-Clemens communication took place in December 1873: on 1 January 1874 Orion wrote to Mollie (CU-MARK), who was visiting in Hartford, that he was forwarding a letter from Tip Saunders to Fredonia; this must have been a letter addressed to Clemens that Mollie had sent to Orion (Lampton 1990, 88, 93–94; Selby, 137; Bridwell, 9–10). The “cousin in Texas” has not been identified.

Click to add citation to My Citations.

2 Presumably Clemens had told Parish of his mother’s genealogical enthusiasm in a letter not known to survive. Parish, a student in 1874, was a native of Salem, Virginia (near Roanoke); although Clemens acknowledged her as a cousin, the specifics of their relationship have not been documented. Available genealogies of the Clemens and Lampton families do not include her, and her letters to Clemens have not been found (Wall).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS facsimile, in “Intimate Letters of Mark Twain 60 Years Ago to Arkansan Revealed,” Memphis Commercial Appeal of unknown date. This article, written by Jeannette Blount and headed “Marianna Ark., July 9,” was published sometime in the early 1930s (see below). Copy-text is a photocopy of the newspaper in the Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK). This photocopy was provided by Cyril Clemens, who preserved a clipping of the article in a scrapbook. Although visible at the top of the photocopy are the printed words “Monday morning” and the handwritten date “7-10-33,” the only available microfilm of the Memphis Appeal for Monday, 10 July 1933, did not contain this article, nor did any other issue in July 1933. The actual date of the clipping has not been discovered.

Previous publication: L6, 214–215.

Provenance:When the Commercial Appeal published the letter, it belonged to Mrs. J. O. Thompson of Aubrey, Lee County, Arkansas (Emma Parish’s niece). It was reportedly destroyed in 1986 when Mrs. Thompson died (Thomason, 326).