My problem sending a "clean" yarn on the Forum raised an interesting  
ongoing set of lessons on the mechanics of the Forum. In the process, I fear my  
original post may have gotten lost. So I will replay it today as one of 
today's  Thanksgiving leftovers.   Humor or Gossip, take your choice:
 
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 nearby Shakespeare rock, 
and  the meadow, where Walker is planting grain, two facts that lock down the  
location.
 
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 which ran 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 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 afternoon. In Roughing It he later 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 early September, 1861, and 
the 1862  claim survey and plat filed 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, General Land Office surveyor Butler  
Ives wrote in his original survey of the Glenbrook area, that the house was 
that  of "Messrs. Warren and Murdock.: (The dracftsman did not include the 
names on  the plat of Ives survey.) Ives also wrote that the house was near a 
"Sawmill,  just built". (In Roughing It, Twain carefully specifies "a 
sawmill 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 retires from Law  
Enforcement. He asked about Lamson, then the occupants--two men, a woman and a  gi
rl, 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 inNew York state 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.
 
Robert E. (Bob) Stewart
 
 
All documents mentioned above, excepting the Lamson Journal, are in the  
online package at
https://futureboy.us/twain/2014Version6Total.pdf