This is the kind of evidence enumerated in some statistical methods. 
They track misused words like hard/difficult, a/an, their/there, odd 
habits in phrasing, British vs US usage, misspellings, regional 
differences, use of passive voice, patterns in the use of contractions 
which can be telling, and word frequency patterns. These methods are 
used in law enforcement and I see reason they couldn't be used to 
establish attributions of literary works. One obvious advantage is that 
while in law enforcement there are often very few samples to work from 
and little or no control group, we have an abundance of samples for the 
control group for every period of Twain's life.,

Kevin
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------ Original Message ------
From: "Barbara Schmidt" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: 2/13/2019 4:27:03 PM
Subject: Re: Rediscovered Twain Sketch?

>The Hamburg canal connection has a potential tie to Frank M. Thorn (aka "Hy
>Slocum") who had his home in East Hamburg. Would the "Common Council" that
>was tasked with addressing the canal nuisance be the same group as the Erie
>County Board of Supervisors? I note that I identified Thorn as a member of
>this group of Supervisors between 1870 and 1880.
>
>As to Leonora and Augustus, a quick and dirty search on google advanced
>book search shows the book JULIA DE GRAMONT by Lady Cassandra Hawke (1788)
>features two characters with that name. The book is not in Gribben's MARK
>TWAIN'S LIBRARY: A RECONSTRUCTION.  But we are all eagerly awaiting
>Gribben's updated reference volumes to see what has been added.
>
>Barb
>