Sam Clemens and his brother Henry Clemens

HENRY CLEMENS
1838-1858

Henry Clemens, Sam's younger brother, died June 21, 1858 as a result of injuries received in the explosion of the PENNSYLVANIA on June 13, 1858. Sam related the incident in Chapter 20 of Life on the Mississippi. After an altercation with Pilot William Brown, Sam left the PENNSYLVANIA in New Orleans on June 5. Henry continued on in his capacity as a "mud clerk" with the PENNSYLVANIA and was on board when the boat exploded.

Clemens' comments: I had found a place on the PENNSYLVANIA for my brother Henry, who was two years my junior. It was not a place of profit, it was only a place of promise. He was "mud" clerk. Mud clerks received no salary, but they were in the line of promotion. They could become, presently, third clerk and second clerk, then chief clerk - that is to say, purser.
- Mark Twain's Autobiography

Henry Clemens & Pennsylvania

Survivors of the PENNSYLVANIA explosion were taken ashore at Memphis, Tennessee. On June 16, 1858 the Memphis Eagle and Enquirer reported on the arrival of Samuel Clemens who had rushed to be at Henry's side after the disaster:

We witnessed one of the most affecting scenes at the Exchange yesterday that has ever been seen. The brother of Mr. Henry Clemens, second clerk of the Pennsylvania, who now lies dangerously ill from the injuries received by the explosion of that boat, arrived in the city yesterday afternoon, on the steamer A. T. LACY. He hurried to the Exchange to see his brother, and on approaching the bedside of the wounded man, his feelings so much overcame him, at the scalded and emaciated form before him, that he sunk to the floor overpowered. There was scarcely a dry eye in the house; the poor sufferers shed tears at the sight. This brother had been pilot on the Pennsylvania, but fortunately for him, had remained in New Orleans when the boat started up.
- Memphis Eagle and Enquirer, 16 June 1858

Illustration of Sam at his dying brother's bedside. From SUNDAY MAGAZINE, March 29, 1908.

He lingered in fearful agony seven days and a half, during which time he had full possession of his senses, only at long intervals, and then but for a few moments at a time. His brain was injured by the concussion, and from that moment his great intellect was a ruin. We were not sorry his wounds proved fatal, for if he had lived he would have been but the wreck of his former self.
- "My brother, Henry Clemens..." incomplete and unidentified newspaper located in Clemens' papers at the Mark Twain Project at the University of California, Berkeley