It is not that simple. Sam himself dated his 1862 letters "Aurora, Calif/Nev Terr." Because the question is "What was the first place in California where Mark Twain resided?", the answer is San Francisco. In 1862 he was just Sam "Josh" Clemens. Mark Twain never even visited Aurora, much less resided there.In 1861 and 1862, Aurora sent voting members to the Nevada Territorial Legislature, and to the California State Legislature. At one point the Speakers of the Assembly in both the Nevada Territorial Legislature and the California State Legislature were from Aurora. Voting occurred simultaneously in both the territory and state, but at different polling places, and people walked from one polling station to the other, voting two times. In 1863 the two governments sent a survey crew out and it determined Aurora was three miles inside the line on the Nevada side. For convenience, Gov. Nye of Nevada Territory did not "organize" Esmeralda county since California had the Mono County organization headquartered in Aurora. There are all kinds of nuances and side tales to the story, but the bottom line would be that during the summer of 1862, Aurora was physically in Nevada Territory but did not know that for a certainty, and the Esmeralda Mining District in which Aurora was located was governed by California Law. Maybe Aurora should be the first place Sam and not Mark resided in California, but with an asterisk.
On Friday, January 13, 2017 10:44 AM, Clay Shannon <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
I think there are two possible answers to this:
AuroraSan Francisco
Aurora because it was actually considered to be in California when Twain li=
ved and worked (mined/milled) there in 1862. I learned this in RKR's MT A-Z=
compendium, and=C2=A0that it was found to be actually barely within Nevada=
's borders after a later (1874) survey.
So: is it to be considered that Twain lived in Aurora, CA before living in =
Frisco? Or is it to be considered that he only *thought* he was in Californ=
ia, whereas he was really yet in Nevada?
=C2=A0- B. Clay Shannon
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