Steve, I'd take the Wecter biog with a heavy dose of salt, and I'd be even more circumspect about MT's autobiographical utterances. If you look at the early letters, you'll see evidence to contradict many of the standard visions of SLC's youth. Consider, for example, the idea that Sam was lazy and the "bad boy" of the family whereas Henry was a walking angel. The letters suggest a much more complicated reality, more that Henry was the baby (i.e. pampered by contrast) and that Sam worked hard, scrupulously, and with a sense of carrying more than his own weight as an apprentice printer. This is a long way of saying that the MT Project letters volumes from UC Press contain much biographical raw material and interpretation that you might want to use as your primary biography for the early years. I'll add a plug, too, for Dempsey's book for the slice of life it gives; while it doesn't profess to give a biog of SLC in Hannibal, it is scruplous in its use of historical sources to create a picture of a significant part of SLC's childhood environment and culture. GC