SLC’s mother’s cousin James J. Lampton was born in Kentucky. He studied both law and medicine and was a major in the Kentucky militia. He lived for a time in Louisiana, Missouri (about twenty-five miles southeast of Hannibal), but by the late 1850s had moved to St. Louis with his wife and five children. SLC frequently visited the Lampton home when he was a Mississippi River pilot. Although a lawyer by profession, in the 1860s Lampton worked as a salesman and bill collector, then went into business for himself as a cotton and tobacco agent. SLC portrayed his cousin in The Gilded Age (1873–74) as Colonel Sellers, the incorrigible optimist who believes each new speculative venture will yield him a fortune.