April 23, 2025 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, the river town of Hannibal, Missouri, spared Mark Twain from nothing, exposing him to poverty, death, racism, and the need to make decisions for himself. Here's Richard Garey, a Mark Twain aficionado, with the story of this all-important town.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
And we continue with our American stories, and we love
to bring you stories of places across this great country
of ours, and today we bring you the story of
a town. Hannibal, Missouri, was in the mid eighteen hundreds,
a gateway to the vast unknown territory beyond the Mississippi
and the town that shaped Samuel Langhorne Clemens, the father
(00:34):
of American literature, better known as Mark Twain. Here is
Richard Gary, who spent the better part of three decades
portraying Twain in a play he's written based on transcripts
of Twain's own on stage material. In the early two thousands,
Richard bought an old stable in the heart of Hannibal,
Missouri and turned it into a theater where he performs regularly.
(00:56):
We just had to sit down and ask him about
this wild tan and the man it produced here is
Richard Gary.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Well, what you have to understand is that when you
cross the Mississippi River, you're in the west. It also
is a river town, and that combination of being a
western town and a river town assured that this was
(01:28):
going to be wild. And then people are heading west,
and this was the main immigration route because they wanted
to get out to Saint Joe where the wagon turns were,
so you could take the Oregon Trail, you could take
(01:48):
the California Trail, or the Santa Fe Trail. From Saint Joe,
steamboats would hit town. Every type of character on earth
would get off. Sam Clemens one day he was up
here in this area somewhere and he heard yelling. So
(02:12):
his curiosity got the better of him. Went down. Two
men are yelling some sort of argument, and one of
them said, well, let's just take this argument to arms,
and the other one said, well that's fine with me.
I'll just shoot she dead. It's kind of like the
(02:36):
old westerns, you know. So they went out, paced off
fifteen paces, turned and fired, and the little one was right.
He got him, the other one right in the chest.
They both got shots off. Sam Clemens is standing there.
(02:57):
Can you imagine his mother with all children growing up
in all of that. And so they picked the man up.
They took him over your Grant's drug store and put
him out on the floor. And when shooting like that
would happen in a small place, and about a thousand
people lived here at that time, they all gather down there.
(03:17):
Why it's going on? And so the lake comers, and
Sam describes this, The lake comers come up and they go,
I'll move over. I pay taxes. I have as much
right to see a man dies anybody else. Move it.
And so he said someone ran out and fetched a
(03:39):
heavy bible and brought it back. And he said, I
was just a boy, but I thought it was cruel,
very cruel, because they opened that heavy bible up and
they put it down on that poor man's chest. He
was struggling to breathe, and according to the story, that
pretty much did it. He breathed his lass there. But
(04:03):
he used that story in Huckleberry Finn. It's the killing
of Old Bogs by Colonel Sherburn. But it actually happened
right down there. And he said, all writers that I know,
they take everything that's ever happened to them and eventually
it goes in the material. But this little alleyway here
(04:31):
by the building is dead Man's Alley. Well earned wide
open gambling places, saloons, stabbings in this alleyway. The whole
town had that atmosphere. And that's why I say a
wild West town. Not totally lawless, but there's certainly that element,
(04:52):
you know, the locals, always trying to keep a lid
on things, and then people coming from who knows where. Really,
they came from all over the world through here. On
one occasion, an English lord came through here on safari,
you know, and that it made sense because just like
(05:15):
they went to Africa, they came here for American game,
you know, grizzlies, buffalo, big horn, sheep, whatever, you know.
And so he came through with his entourage, got a steamboat,
had it on safari. The steamboats, it's it's part of
(05:42):
the lore here. It's one reason the town existed as
a trading center. There were no roads in those days,
just no just trails, but the Mississippi was their highway here,
huge commercial and transportation vehicle in the center part of
(06:06):
the country here. Like Sam Clemens's family, they came up
here on steamboat. They didn't come covered wagons. He wasn't
born here. He was born west of here in a
tiny needle place called Florida, Monroe County, Missouri. And I
(06:31):
think Florida had about a hundred people in it when
he was born. They've preserved his house. It's over there
as a tourist attraction. It's inside a building and it's
a tiny little house, he said, I've always referred to
it as a palace, but there are photographs now, so
I still have to be more guarded. When he was four,
(06:56):
they moved here for greater opportunities, and his father built
that house over on Hill Street, the white house over there,
and that's where they lived first here. Then after his
father died, they were very poor. Can't imagine anyone more
(07:16):
poverty stricken than he was as a boy. And became
our first celebrity worldwide. He could get off a train
in India and be instantly recognized. He's a worldwide uh phenomenon.
But he came from this little little place. In those days,
(07:44):
people helped each other out. But he says his mother
was not too proud to take any job. She took
in washing. She his sister gave piano lessons over at
the house. They did literally everything. And then she took
him out of school at the start of sixth grade,
(08:08):
and he was apprentice to mister a Mint, who ran
a newspaper. The building was right here in the slot.
The hotel was over here in that building over on
that side. There was a store down below. In his
office was on the second floor. He didn't get paid
(08:29):
anything as an apprentice, but he got room and board,
so that's one less mouth to feed, and he's learning
a trade. And he says he has no regrets from
those days because right down there's where he learned to write,
in that newspaper office. And I can throw a stone
(08:52):
down there from here, you know, it's just wonderful having
that in my backyard.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
And we've been listening to Richard Gary, who has spent
the better part of three decades portraying Twain in a
play he's written based on transcripts of Twain's own onstage material.
More from this story in Hannibal, Missouri, the town that
created Mark Twain. This is our American stories, And we
(09:40):
returned to our American stories and to Richard Gary's storytelling
about a small town in Missouri called Hannibal. It happens
to also be the place that Mark Twain put on
the map. Let's return to Richard.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
He had a his mother rented a little slave, Sandy
in all respects except officially he became his brother, lived
in a house over there, and I think it's all
(10:22):
those experiences that led, you know, to his amazing movement
from the culture of his time, to someone who created
that tiring, heroic black figure. We don't give him enough credit.
(10:44):
He's criticized for using the N word, but oh, he
was so far ahead. This is racism central right here.
When he grew up, he was willing to examine everything.
He believed that you needed to examine everything. He said,
(11:10):
you need to look at life, you need to think
about it and then make up your own rules. And
he said that's not as easy as it sounds, but
I think that's what he did. And he grew up
thinking that slavery was God ordained. His father was a
(11:33):
slaveholder half the town with slave half fee. But he
didn't as he grew up, he didn't just accept it.
He was willing to challenge himself to think about it.
(11:57):
And of course he had some great influences like Sandy
and like Uncle Danel, who was a slave on on
his uncle's farm that used to tell them stories every night.
He was a master storyteller, not formally educated at all,
(12:18):
but he said, the most educated man I ever knew.
He told them all the Uncle Remus tales long before
Joel Chandler Harris wrote them down. They were folklore and
so he would hold them spellbound. And he said that
good Man gave me my love of story and literature
(12:41):
single handedly. He said, he just handed it to me
every night I heard him. And so he's the model
for Jim, Uncle Danel. But all those experiences he thought about,
he pondered he and then I think the catalyst when
(13:03):
he went out to California. He saw how the Chinese
were being treated and it outraged him, and he took
up their cause in the newspaper. That was his first
fora and to defense of a minority. And then Huckleberry
(13:26):
Finn is into that whole question of slavery and the
and the rights of a black man. What you see
in Huckleberry Finn is this boy and this man going
(13:47):
down the river trying to escape from that hole. The
boy is escaping a drunk, abusive father, and Jim is
escaping slavery. And as they go along, though as you
read the book, it slowly does on Huckleberry. This is
(14:13):
a man I've never thought of him as a man.
But and it's just a little chipping away, chipping away,
chipping away. See, they told them in Sunday School that
if they didn't tell a runaway they would go to hell.
(14:36):
And that's quite a threat and something that would have
a lot of uh of influence on a kid. And
they see some lines and Huckleberry says, that might be krom.
(15:03):
I better go paddle ashore and see. So he had
made up his mind telling him, but he had already
written a letter to so he pushes off and Gem says,
dare you go the old true huck you do on
the white gentman? Ever keep his promise, old Gem, And
(15:27):
he said, took the tuck out of him, and he
got to thinking. So he tore up the letter and
he said, well, I'll just go to hell. Said that.
You see, that's when he goes, this is my friend,
this is a human being. I'm not gonna do it.
(15:50):
I'll go to hell. And that's what it means. It's powerful.
Now it hits you right, and it's like it's what
I call Hannibal finesse. He takes a two buffour and
slaps you across the face with it. You know, wake up,
(16:15):
this is what in any time you're denegrating one of
these people, you know, what are you doing? But what
makes it even more powerful is that he came out
of all that where it was just an every day thing.
(16:35):
He's immersed in that racism, I mean up to his
well neck, you know, in it every day, yet he
comes out of it. And and and that's part of
what I've been fascinated with, you know this, how that,
(16:59):
How did that happen? And what? And I think part
of it is is that that independence here where nobody
forces anyone to their point of view. Here you can
fly your own flag if you want, you know. And
(17:21):
and it's still here. And I I think it used
to be more prevalent in America that that was possible.
And I don't I don't agree with you. Well, that's fine,
we can still be neighbors. I remember my grandfather saying
that man came over. I'm from Tennessee originally. My grandfather
(17:48):
had a cotton farm and that I worked on growing up.
And my grandfather always voted Republican. Now, if you don't
know much about the South and the days, that was
the Protest Party, that was UH, the party of Reconstruction
of UH. That was anti racism. And the Democrat Party
(18:14):
was a party of UH, Jim Crow and keeping people down.
And the guy came over. I see my great grandfather
fought for the Union. He was born in Ireland, came here,
hated slavery, fought for the Union and the war, and
so my family had always been Republican there in the South.
(18:36):
So this guy comes over and says, Chester, you're gonna
have to vote Democratic this time. There's just no way
you can vote Republican. And my grandfather said, well there is.
I just go in and mark my ballot. He said, no,
you're you're really I'd hate to get rough on you.
(18:58):
And my grandfather said, well, even get as rough as
you want, but we'll still remain friends, and you'll the Democrat.
Now vote republic life.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
And yes, there was a time when such things happened.
I think they still happen here today, though maybe not
as frequently as we would like. And you were listening
to Richard Gary and my goodness, I don't think there's
a guy in America who knows more about the subject
of Hannibal Missouri or Mark Twain. And again, he has
spent the better part of three decades portraying Twain, based
(19:39):
on Twain's own writing and some of the transcripts of
Twain's own on stage material. The father of American literature
Mark Twain, the town he spent the formative part of
his young life. And that's Hannibal, Missouri, the story of both,
and so much more here on our American Stories.
And we continue with our American stories, and we love
to bring you stories of places across this great country
of ours, and today we bring you the story of
a town. Hannibal, Missouri, was in the mid eighteen hundreds,
a gateway to the vast unknown territory beyond the Mississippi
and the town that shaped Samuel Langhorne Clemens, the father
(00:34):
of American literature, better known as Mark Twain. Here is
Richard Gary, who spent the better part of three decades
portraying Twain in a play he's written based on transcripts
of Twain's own on stage material. In the early two thousands,
Richard bought an old stable in the heart of Hannibal,
Missouri and turned it into a theater where he performs regularly.
(00:56):
We just had to sit down and ask him about
this wild tan and the man it produced here is
Richard Gary.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Well, what you have to understand is that when you
cross the Mississippi River, you're in the west. It also
is a river town, and that combination of being a
western town and a river town assured that this was
(01:28):
going to be wild. And then people are heading west,
and this was the main immigration route because they wanted
to get out to Saint Joe where the wagon turns were,
so you could take the Oregon Trail, you could take
(01:48):
the California Trail, or the Santa Fe Trail. From Saint Joe,
steamboats would hit town. Every type of character on earth
would get off. Sam Clemens one day he was up
here in this area somewhere and he heard yelling. So
(02:12):
his curiosity got the better of him. Went down. Two
men are yelling some sort of argument, and one of
them said, well, let's just take this argument to arms,
and the other one said, well that's fine with me.
I'll just shoot she dead. It's kind of like the
(02:36):
old westerns, you know. So they went out, paced off
fifteen paces, turned and fired, and the little one was right.
He got him, the other one right in the chest.
They both got shots off. Sam Clemens is standing there.
(02:57):
Can you imagine his mother with all children growing up
in all of that. And so they picked the man up.
They took him over your Grant's drug store and put
him out on the floor. And when shooting like that
would happen in a small place, and about a thousand
people lived here at that time, they all gather down there.
(03:17):
Why it's going on? And so the lake comers, and
Sam describes this, The lake comers come up and they go,
I'll move over. I pay taxes. I have as much
right to see a man dies anybody else. Move it.
And so he said someone ran out and fetched a
(03:39):
heavy bible and brought it back. And he said, I
was just a boy, but I thought it was cruel,
very cruel, because they opened that heavy bible up and
they put it down on that poor man's chest. He
was struggling to breathe, and according to the story, that
pretty much did it. He breathed his lass there. But
(04:03):
he used that story in Huckleberry Finn. It's the killing
of Old Bogs by Colonel Sherburn. But it actually happened
right down there. And he said, all writers that I know,
they take everything that's ever happened to them and eventually
it goes in the material. But this little alleyway here
(04:31):
by the building is dead Man's Alley. Well earned wide
open gambling places, saloons, stabbings in this alleyway. The whole
town had that atmosphere. And that's why I say a
wild West town. Not totally lawless, but there's certainly that element,
(04:52):
you know, the locals, always trying to keep a lid
on things, and then people coming from who knows where. Really,
they came from all over the world through here. On
one occasion, an English lord came through here on safari,
you know, and that it made sense because just like
(05:15):
they went to Africa, they came here for American game,
you know, grizzlies, buffalo, big horn, sheep, whatever, you know.
And so he came through with his entourage, got a steamboat,
had it on safari. The steamboats, it's it's part of
(05:42):
the lore here. It's one reason the town existed as
a trading center. There were no roads in those days,
just no just trails, but the Mississippi was their highway here,
huge commercial and transportation vehicle in the center part of
(06:06):
the country here. Like Sam Clemens's family, they came up
here on steamboat. They didn't come covered wagons. He wasn't
born here. He was born west of here in a
tiny needle place called Florida, Monroe County, Missouri. And I
(06:31):
think Florida had about a hundred people in it when
he was born. They've preserved his house. It's over there
as a tourist attraction. It's inside a building and it's
a tiny little house, he said, I've always referred to
it as a palace, but there are photographs now, so
I still have to be more guarded. When he was four,
(06:56):
they moved here for greater opportunities, and his father built
that house over on Hill Street, the white house over there,
and that's where they lived first here. Then after his
father died, they were very poor. Can't imagine anyone more
(07:16):
poverty stricken than he was as a boy. And became
our first celebrity worldwide. He could get off a train
in India and be instantly recognized. He's a worldwide uh phenomenon.
But he came from this little little place. In those days,
(07:44):
people helped each other out. But he says his mother
was not too proud to take any job. She took
in washing. She his sister gave piano lessons over at
the house. They did literally everything. And then she took
him out of school at the start of sixth grade,
(08:08):
and he was apprentice to mister a Mint, who ran
a newspaper. The building was right here in the slot.
The hotel was over here in that building over on
that side. There was a store down below. In his
office was on the second floor. He didn't get paid
(08:29):
anything as an apprentice, but he got room and board,
so that's one less mouth to feed, and he's learning
a trade. And he says he has no regrets from
those days because right down there's where he learned to write,
in that newspaper office. And I can throw a stone
(08:52):
down there from here, you know, it's just wonderful having
that in my backyard.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
And we've been listening to Richard Gary, who has spent
the better part of three decades portraying Twain in a
play he's written based on transcripts of Twain's own onstage material.
More from this story in Hannibal, Missouri, the town that
created Mark Twain. This is our American stories, And we
(09:40):
returned to our American stories and to Richard Gary's storytelling
about a small town in Missouri called Hannibal. It happens
to also be the place that Mark Twain put on
the map. Let's return to Richard.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
He had a his mother rented a little slave, Sandy
in all respects except officially he became his brother, lived
in a house over there, and I think it's all
(10:22):
those experiences that led, you know, to his amazing movement
from the culture of his time, to someone who created
that tiring, heroic black figure. We don't give him enough credit.
(10:44):
He's criticized for using the N word, but oh, he
was so far ahead. This is racism central right here.
When he grew up, he was willing to examine everything.
He believed that you needed to examine everything. He said,
(11:10):
you need to look at life, you need to think
about it and then make up your own rules. And
he said that's not as easy as it sounds, but
I think that's what he did. And he grew up
thinking that slavery was God ordained. His father was a
(11:33):
slaveholder half the town with slave half fee. But he
didn't as he grew up, he didn't just accept it.
He was willing to challenge himself to think about it.
(11:57):
And of course he had some great influences like Sandy
and like Uncle Danel, who was a slave on on
his uncle's farm that used to tell them stories every night.
He was a master storyteller, not formally educated at all,
(12:18):
but he said, the most educated man I ever knew.
He told them all the Uncle Remus tales long before
Joel Chandler Harris wrote them down. They were folklore and
so he would hold them spellbound. And he said that
good Man gave me my love of story and literature
(12:41):
single handedly. He said, he just handed it to me
every night I heard him. And so he's the model
for Jim, Uncle Danel. But all those experiences he thought about,
he pondered he and then I think the catalyst when
(13:03):
he went out to California. He saw how the Chinese
were being treated and it outraged him, and he took
up their cause in the newspaper. That was his first
fora and to defense of a minority. And then Huckleberry
(13:26):
Finn is into that whole question of slavery and the
and the rights of a black man. What you see
in Huckleberry Finn is this boy and this man going
(13:47):
down the river trying to escape from that hole. The
boy is escaping a drunk, abusive father, and Jim is
escaping slavery. And as they go along, though as you
read the book, it slowly does on Huckleberry. This is
(14:13):
a man I've never thought of him as a man.
But and it's just a little chipping away, chipping away,
chipping away. See, they told them in Sunday School that
if they didn't tell a runaway they would go to hell.
(14:36):
And that's quite a threat and something that would have
a lot of uh of influence on a kid. And
they see some lines and Huckleberry says, that might be krom.
(15:03):
I better go paddle ashore and see. So he had
made up his mind telling him, but he had already
written a letter to so he pushes off and Gem says,
dare you go the old true huck you do on
the white gentman? Ever keep his promise, old Gem, And
(15:27):
he said, took the tuck out of him, and he
got to thinking. So he tore up the letter and
he said, well, I'll just go to hell. Said that.
You see, that's when he goes, this is my friend,
this is a human being. I'm not gonna do it.
(15:50):
I'll go to hell. And that's what it means. It's powerful.
Now it hits you right, and it's like it's what
I call Hannibal finesse. He takes a two buffour and
slaps you across the face with it. You know, wake up,
(16:15):
this is what in any time you're denegrating one of
these people, you know, what are you doing? But what
makes it even more powerful is that he came out
of all that where it was just an every day thing.
(16:35):
He's immersed in that racism, I mean up to his
well neck, you know, in it every day, yet he
comes out of it. And and and that's part of
what I've been fascinated with, you know this, how that,
(16:59):
How did that happen? And what? And I think part
of it is is that that independence here where nobody
forces anyone to their point of view. Here you can
fly your own flag if you want, you know. And
(17:21):
and it's still here. And I I think it used
to be more prevalent in America that that was possible.
And I don't I don't agree with you. Well, that's fine,
we can still be neighbors. I remember my grandfather saying
that man came over. I'm from Tennessee originally. My grandfather
(17:48):
had a cotton farm and that I worked on growing up.
And my grandfather always voted Republican. Now, if you don't
know much about the South and the days, that was
the Protest Party, that was UH, the party of Reconstruction
of UH. That was anti racism. And the Democrat Party
(18:14):
was a party of UH, Jim Crow and keeping people down.
And the guy came over. I see my great grandfather
fought for the Union. He was born in Ireland, came here,
hated slavery, fought for the Union and the war, and
so my family had always been Republican there in the South.
(18:36):
So this guy comes over and says, Chester, you're gonna
have to vote Democratic this time. There's just no way
you can vote Republican. And my grandfather said, well there is.
I just go in and mark my ballot. He said, no,
you're you're really I'd hate to get rough on you.
(18:58):
And my grandfather said, well, even get as rough as
you want, but we'll still remain friends, and you'll the Democrat.
Now vote republic life.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
And yes, there was a time when such things happened.
I think they still happen here today, though maybe not
as frequently as we would like. And you were listening
to Richard Gary and my goodness, I don't think there's
a guy in America who knows more about the subject
of Hannibal Missouri or Mark Twain. And again, he has
spent the better part of three decades portraying Twain, based
(19:39):
on Twain's own writing and some of the transcripts of
Twain's own on stage material. The father of American literature
Mark Twain, the town he spent the formative part of
his young life. And that's Hannibal, Missouri, the story of both,
and so much more here on our American Stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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