Title: Beck Jolly

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Fiddlinsue
Rank：none Score：220 Posts：220 From：USA Register：11/11/2008 8:17 AM	Date Posted：02/17/2009 6:55 AMCopy HTML   Beck Jolly was a well-respected steamboat pilot and a close friend of Sam Clemens since the fall of 1857 when Clemens apprenticed under Jolly on the John J. Roe. Jolly's career began in 1846 and ended with his retire- ment in 1885.  He piloted steamboats throughout the Civil War on the Mississippi, the Ohio, Tennessee, Yazoo, White and Arkansas Rivers. Clemens described Jolly in glamorous terms.  He admired Jolly for his professed proficiency in Chinese and considered him "very handsome, very graceful, very intelligent, compansionable", with "a fine character" and "the manners of a duck."  Jolly was selected by Clemens as one of the "A 1 alligator pilots". Clemens had once written his mother a letter marked "Private" on each corner and "Strictly Confidential" across the front.  The family was eager to hear what the letter was about but Grandma (Jane) Clemens refused to open it in their presence and went upstairs to read it--in a minute she returned visibly angered.  It was written in Chinese apparently with Beck Jolly's assistance. The following is an incident taken from Beck Jolly's reminiscences which were written between 1898 and 1900: "I was on the Marble City, laying at the wharf at Memphis, April 26th, in the evening the steamer Sultana landed crowded with soldiers returning home, some from prisons, some from hospitals and army......it was generally remarked as being over loaded.  She left for St. Louis late at night and a few miles above Memphis the boilers exploded, throwing everybody into the river.  Boat took fire, burned up and sunk, before day in the morning of the 27th.  I was called up, as well as other officers, and told to come quick as the river was full of men calling for help....Capt. Henry Smith*, president of the line, being on board ordered every attention given the wounded, and personally attended as many as was to be seen among the soldiers until the last one left the boat for the hospitals...Many of the officers of the Sultana was lost--Capt. Cass Mason* and others that have escaped my memory. The Sultana was a large sidewheel packet built in Cincinnati, running from 1863-1865.  There were 1547 lives lost in the explosion.  1517 lives were lost in the Titanic disaster in 1912. Sobieski Jolly died in 1905.  The funeral services were held in the Bofinger Chapel* of Christ Church Cathedral. ***Captain Smith is interred in Bellefontaine Cemetery. ***Captain James Caswell (Cass) Mason, who was part owner of the Sultana, was the husband of Rowena Dozier Mason, the daughter of James Dozier.  She died in 1918 and is interred in Bellefontaine Cemetery. ***The Bofinger Chapel was built by John N. Bofinger to honor his wife.  Bofinger was Captain of the William M. Morrison on which Samuel Clemens served as a cub pilot under Horace Bixby. The image used on this page is from my own personal collection.  The information that I have on this page was compiled through genealogy research and some information was taken from resources through the Bellefontaine Cemetery records.
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