The real Tom Sawyer has been revealed, with new research detailing his life as a hard-drinking and heroic firefighter who once saved 90 people from a steamship fire.
Known to generations as one of the most beloved characters in American literature, an extensive feature in Smithsonian magazine details the life of the man who inspired the fictional child and title character of Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.”
Twain and Sawyer first met in San Francisco in 1863, quickly becoming firm friends who seemingly drank in every saloon the city had to offer, according to the article.
After Twain’s first usage of the “character” in a book three years later, Sawyer is said to have told a reporter at the time, “He (Twain) walks up to me and puts both hands on my shoulders. ‘Tom,’ he says, ‘I’m going to write a book about a boy and the kind I have in mind was just about the toughest boy in the world. Tom, he was just such a boy as you must have been.’”
Smithsonian magazine details how Sawyer was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. where he was a torch boy for Columbia Hook and Ladder Company Number 14. In San Francisco, he worked for Broderick 1, the city’s first volunteer fire company.
In February 1853, while serving as the fire engineer aboard the steamer Independence, Sawyer became a hero when the ship struck a reef off Baja.
With many of the lifeboats broken, Sawyer is said to have swam several roundtrips to and from the shore, which was about 100 yards from the boat, carrying a passenger or two on his back each time.
Ultimately, Sawyer was credited with saving 90 lives at sea, among them 26 people he had rescued singlehandedly, according to the article.
The Smithsonian article quotes a 1898 newspaper article in which Sawyer told a reporter about the influence he had had on Twain’s most famous novel.
“You want to know how I came to figure in his books, do you?” Sawyer asked in the interview, cited by the article.
“Well, as I said, we both was fond of telling stories and spinning yarns.
“Sam (Clemens, Twain’s real name), he was mighty fond of children’s doings and whenever he’d see any little fellers a-fighting on the street, he’d always stop and watch ‘em and then he’d come up to the Blue Wing [saloon] and describe the whole doings and then I’d try and beat his yarn by telling him of the antics I used to play when I was a kid and say, ‘I don’t believe there ever was such another little devil ever lived as I was.’
“Sam, he would listen to these pranks of mine with great interest and he’d occasionally take ‘em down in his notebook. One day he says to me: ‘I am going to put you between the covers of a book some of these days, Tom.’ ‘Go ahead, Sam,’ I said, ‘but don’t disgrace my name.’”