A rare copy of the First Directory of Nevada Territory which sold for $6500 (£5080) in a PBA Galleries sale of April 20.
The first major descriptive and historical account of the territory, it was issued less than three years after the discovery of the famous Comstock Lode and lists in its pages more than 4000 miners, labourers and so on. Also of note, on page 69, is the name of an ‘Assistant Secretary Nevada Territory’, one Samuel Clemens, or Mark Twain, who was in fact assistant to his brother, newspaper publisher Orion Clemens.
In a much enlarged Second Directory… of the following year that sold for $3000 (£2345), Clemens is listed as local editor of the Territorial Enterprise of Virginia City. A typesetter turned journalist, Clemens published the story that brought him to wider national attention, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, in 1865.
