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