In 1963, my family received a lottery of well over 1,500 Stanchfield American members. My cousin John B. Stanchfield’s entry mentioned Harvard Law School, his wife Clara, but it never said the cradle-to-grave friendship between her and Olivia Clemens, Mark Twain’s wife. In fact Stanchfield had been friends with Twain since 1878 and lasted until 1909 when Twain died. I contacted the University of California, Berkeley to find more about Twain and Stanchfield. I learned from a Twain expert, "Stanchfield Garvey" was based on Sam Clemens' brother Orion Clemens. I called Berkeley, continually, because they were closed a lot in 2019 and 2020. One day, a man answered their voicemail so my first words were...

“My name is Ronin Stanchfield and I...” The man pleasantly said, “I was just reading about John B. Stanchfield. My name is Ben Griffin and I’m senior editor for the Mark Twain Project.” A good conversation emerged and a few days later, I received the following and more:

Dear Mr. Stanchfield:
I’m attaching a spreadsheet listing the Stanchfield correspondence. Most of the manuscripts are here, for a few we have facsimiles. I find you can now make an appointment to do research in the Mark Twain Papers. Please schedule with Melissa Martin, our administrative officer. Clemens’ billiards companions had jocular names for the billiard room; John B. 's was “Sarsfield.” I expect we’ll never know why. Clemens also called him “Buck.”

Clemens tried to get John B. to invest in the invention, the Paige Typesetting Machine, which he had been backing for many years. Clara invested $5,000. Hereon Stanchfield's got ensnared in the fortunes of the typesetting machine and much of the correspondence pertains to its disastrous progress. In 1895 Clemens engaged Stanchfield as his lawyer in the wrangling over ownership of the machine. After Clemens moved to New York City in 1903 he saw a good deal of the Stanchfields and continued to employ John B. as a lawyer.

Clara Clemens called him “lovely”; but Jean Clemens,
after Stanchfield lost the N.Y. governorship in 1900,
was hostile: “McKinley got elected! O’Dell got elected
governor of New York State, as against that beast of a
Stanchfield” Isabel V. Lyon, Clemens’s secretary,
thought him “a very handsome man, and clever too.”

I’m attaching a photo of Clemens with the Stanch-
fields and a pile of cats at his last house, “Storm-
field,” taken 1908. Hard to see Mr. S’s handsome fea-
tures under the shade of his straw boater.

Clemens gave the manuscript of his story “The Game as
Played Up North” to Clara Stanchfield in 1902 but its
present whereabouts are unknown... I don’t suppose
you’ve got it?
Sincerely yours,
Ben Griffin
Mark Twain Projec

I soon learned John B. Stanchfield helped Mark Twain
open the gates to his control over Sam Clemens' literary
writings. The vehicle was a hundred year testimony and to create a corporate ownership. From there I called upon a Musical Comedy and Farce friendship between Sam Clemens and Nikola Tesla. It focused on another Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. It is my plan, and my intention to inform Twain experts that Buck was a look-a-like character, a twin if you will, in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. An argument could be that Huck Finn was Buck Grangerford, and was a test of Twains about twins.