Moving to another computer, I will try this one last time:
Hoping your Thanksgiving today is full of family, food and friends, I
offer the following diversion, dubbed by my granddaughter as "Funny how people
don't change despite modern technology.”
It is a runaway husband anecdote, peripherally involving Sam Clemens. It
is a piece of Twain-related "gossip" from 1861.
In researching people and places in 1861 Nevada Territory, I ran across a
journal by sketch artist Joseph Lamson, of Maine, and obtained photocopies
from Lamson's journal at CalHistSoc.
Lamson writes of hiking north along the east shore of Lake Tahoe in May,
1861. He spent time exploring Cave Rock, then hiked north until he came to a
“house,” an occupied log cabin, where he spent the night.
He writes of "small squirrels" [chipmunks] scampering in through the
chinking of the house, and the daughter of the unnamed "lady of the house”
chasing them off. He names his host as "Mr. Walker," and writes of a visitor,
"Mr. Patterson" also being there. Lamson mentions Shakespeare rock, and the
meadow, where "Walker" is planting grain.
It is clear he is at Glenbrook Bay, then called Walton's Landing, where
four men (Capt. A. W. Pray, Rufus Walton, George Warren, and Nelson E.
Murdock) had formed a sawmill company. Capt. Pray lived in Virginia City. Walton
owned the Clear Creek toll road from there to a point just north of Carson
Valley. He collected toll where he, lived half-way along that road, near
"Mr. Jones" sawmill. Warren and Murdock lived at the site. Numerous records
identify Nelson Eliphalet Murdock as a "millwright.
Lamson's journal begs the question: "Mr. Walker and Mr. Patterson"? No
records have been found of a man named Walker at the Lake in 1861, and there
was only the one cabin/house at Walton's Landing on the November 1861
General Land Office original survey. But Lamson was specific about the occupants’
names.
In the September, 1861 letter by Sam Clemens, he writes that a few days
earlier he and John Kinney had arrived at the “lower camp” at the Lake, then
they ". . . set out for the only house on this side of the Lake,
three miles from there, down the shore" on a stormy day in September 1861
afternoon. In Roughing It he writes it had been "a three mile pull" to
reach the “Brigade” camp on first arrival. It becomes clear from the “three
miles” that they considered the brigade camp to be their “lower camp” and
they were now back at the point of beginning. Sam does not name or directly
mention people there. In the 1861 letter Sam specifies “lower camp”, three
miles “down the shore”, and “this side of the lake.
Four of his roommates at Mrs. Murphy’s (Capt. John Nye, William Wagner,
Johannes Slott and James Coulter) were partners in a Tahoe timber claim.
From a description of the claim by Will Wagner in 1861, and the 1862 claim
survey and plat by the Ormsby County Surveyor, we know their “John Nye & Co.”
camp was three miles north of the Warren/Murdock cabin. All of which
suggests Clemens “lower camp” was at the Brigade Claim of Roughing It.
A few weeks later, in November 1861, surveyor Butler Ives wrote in the
Land Office survey of the Glenbrook area, that the house was that of "Messrs.
Warren and Murdock." (The draftsman didn’t include the names on the plat of
Ives’ survey.) Ives also notes the nearby "sawmill, just built". (Roughing
It specifies "a saw-mill and some workmen", not a working sawmill.) In
December 1861, George Warren and Nelson Eliphalet Murdock filed a claim on the
land under both the house and sawmill. In it they state they have lived
there since May, 1860.
So, OK, who is this “Walker” fellow that Lamson tells us lived there in
May, 1861? I mentioned my quandary to a historian who retired from Law
Enforcement. He asked about Lamson, and then the occupants--two men, a woman and
a girl, and then promptly said " Murdock didn't want folks back home to
find him", adding that Murdock was neither the first nor the only man to use
the Gold Rush to skip out on his family.
A Murdock family genealogist in New York confirmed that Nelson Eliphalet
Murdock, born 1810, was a millwright from New York who left his wife and
three children in the East in 1852 for California--and was never heard from
again. (The term is “grass Widow.)
Whether Lamson knew the true names of his host or not is unknown. It's
possible he was covering for Murdock, and equally possible they gave Lamson
aliases. Same goes for Sam Clemens.
Bob Stewart
All documents mentioned above, excepting the Lamson Journal, are in the
online package at https://futureboy.us/twain/2014Version6Total.pdf
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