1 This “Form for message” is in the hand of William Martin Gillespie (1838–85), originally from New York, who was chief clerk of the House of Representatives of the first Territorial Legislature, in session from 1 October through 29 November 1861. He served in the same capacity for the second Territorial Legislature (11 November–20 December 1862) and subsequently held a succession of other offices. The fact that Gillespie left blanks for the name of the clerk suggests that he prepared the form before he was formally elected to the post on 1 October (Andrew J. Marsh, 12, 668–69 n. 29).

2 George Turner (d. 1885), an Ohio lawyer, had been appointed chief justice of Nevada Territory by Abraham Lincoln in March 1861. After arriving in Carson City in the second week of September of that year, Turner served until 1864 when he and the rest of the judiciary resigned following accusations of corruption made by the Nevada press (Andrew J. Marsh, 670 n. 41). He apparently devised the “Form for message” which Gillespie transcribed.

3 Clemens was Orion’s eight-dollar-a-day clerk throughout the legislative session (William C. Miller, 2–5). He presumably sent Orion this note after his return to Carson City from Lake Bigler and before the legislature convened on 1 October. During that two-week period, Orion frequently must have been occupied preparing the legislative headquarters, two rooms in “the Capitol that is to be. It is located in the upper story of a lonely stone building, nearly two miles east of Carson City and on the opposite side of the narrow alkali plain on which the city is built” (Andrew J. Marsh, 2). On 1 October both Orion and Turner were in the House of Representatives—the former to preside until the election of officers, the latter to administer the oath of office to the members. They then could have attended to the matter of the book, probably a volume containing handwritten model forms drafted by Turner and Gillespie, without Clemens’s intervention. The present “Form for message” was at one time pasted in a scrapbook (which Orion afterward used for clippings) facing a model form for recording House passage of a bill, also in Gillespie’s hand (Scrapbook 2, CU-MARK). It is likely that this scrapbook, which contains a number of House transmittal documents and receipts later penned by Gillespie, was the book Clemens sent “by Dorsey,” who remains unidentified. In any event, Turner could not have had such a book “while he was in the States,” since he could only have collaborated on it with Gillespie after arriving in Nevada Territory.