Jon -- Hold Everything!  Tom B. was a "respected justice of the peace in
Montana," did you say?  Murray, the town May Hutton placed Uncle Tonk in,
isn't all that far from the Montana border.  Hutton says Tonk was born on
February 10, 1842 at Fort Madison, Iowa but moved to Hannibal where he
"grew to manhood" (p. 190).  Got a birthdate and birth place for Tom
Blankeship by any chance?

Breathless in north Idaho...

Ron

----------
> From: Jon Stephen Miller <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Tom Blankenship
> Date: Monday, October 11, 1999 3:55 PM
>
> Ron's right--Tom Blankenship was a childhood friend of Twain's.  In 1906
> he recalled TB as the model for Huck.  From _Mark Twain A to Z_ (1995):
>
> [TB's] father, Woodson Blankenship, resembled Pap Finn in being a town
> drunk [in Hannibal], but was quite different in having a wife, Mahala,
and
> eight children, all of whom were born in Missouri.  The Blankenships were
> desperately poor, undisciplined and disreputable.  Tom Blankenship
> consequently grew up badly fed, unschooled, unwashed and unsupervised.
> (37)
>
> Different stories describe Tom's adult life: in 1889 and 1899 he was
> reported dead, but in 1902 Tom's sister Elizabeth told Twain he was a
> "respected justice of the peace in Montana." (37)
>
> Jon
>
>
> ----------------------
> Jon Stephen Miller
> Assistant Editor
> Walt Whitman Quarterly Review
> Department of English
> The University of Iowa
> Iowa City, Iowa  52242-1492
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