CAMPBELL COUNTY, VA - HISTORY - Campbell Chronicles and Family Sketches
			Family  Sketches - Clemens
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                   CAMPBELL CHRONICLES and FAMILY SKETCHES

              Embracing the History of CAMPBELL COUNTY, VIRGINIA
                                  1782-1926
                                By R. H. EARLY
                              With Illustrations
                              J. P. BELL COMPANY
                           LYNCHBURG, VIRGINIA 1927


Clemens

  Clemens (so spelt) is to be found first in the will of Robert Douglass in
1787, where he gives Polly Clemens as the married name of one of his daughters.
Samuel Clemens, married Pamela, dau. of Stephen and Rachel Moorman-Goggin in
1797, and in 1799 Gasper Clemens, m. Polly Caldwell. John Marshall, the son of
Samuel and Pamela Goggin-Clemens, was born in 1798, and moved first to Florida
then to Hannibal, Mo., married Jane Lampton, and became a justice of the peace;
he was the father of Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain). In 1841, soon after
settling in Hannibal, Clemens was a member of a circuit court jury which found
three Illinois men guilty of stealing slaves, the case becoming historic. Slaves
working at the mouth of Fabius river were to meet their rescuers, who would
escort them to liberty. The negroes told their masters of the plot and actually
guarded the three men who came to liberate them, thus preventing their escape.

  The family of John Marshall Clemens were buried at Hannibal. Overlooking the
Mississippi river and Pike and Rails' counties, is an old ivy-covered chapel at
Mount Olivet cemetery; in the chapel is an old-fashioned flat tombstone
inscribed, "Passed on, John M. Clemens, born in Campbell Co. Va., Aug. 11, 1798,
died in Hannibal, Mo., Mar. 14, 1847." New markers were placed over the Clemens'
family graves by Col. John L. Robards, a close friend of Twain, who authorized
replacing of markers for each of his family. An index (near the top of the old
slab) points upward; the stone was preserved with the thought that some day
Twain would go back to his old home town and see it.

  At the completion of the railroad pier at Sewall's Point, there was a
gathering of the patrons of the Virginian railway which was made the occasion
for much oratory. When President Rogers was called on to address the assemblage
he answered that it was his business to make railroads and not speeches, he said
he had brought Twain to talk for him. Thus introduced the humorist confided to
his audience that the railroad magnate had come to him in great perturbation for
advice, saying he wished to learn of some scheme by which he would lose money,
that so far every thing he touched had caused him to make money. Twain said he
had recommended the construction of the Virginia tidewater railroad, which he
was confident would entail loss; then when Rogers reported that he had followed
the advice, completed the road and still continued to make money, Twain retorted
that he had not carried the road far enough; he should extend it into North
Carolina. Doubtless the nearest point Clemens reached to the old home of his
Campbell ancestors was when he passed over the Virginian railway crossing the
county's southern section at this stockholder's meeting.


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