A one page document, written and signed by Clemens on December 25th, 1871. While traveling in Chicago, Clemens fills out and signs a Western Union Telegraph Co. form with a Christmas message to his new wife, Olivia, back home, “…Mrs. S.L. Clemens, Forest and Hawthorne St., Hartford, Conn. Merry Christmas! How are you all? S.L. Clemens, 785 Michigan Ave.” Clemens married Olivia Langdon in February of 1870. Langdon came from a prominent, progressive New York family, who socialized with activists such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stowe, the latter of which became the Clemens’ next door neighbor in Hartford. On their first date, Samuel and Olivia attended a reading of Charles Dickens in New York. $1,495.
