The REAL Tom Sawyer revealed: A hard-drinking and heroic fire fighter who saved 90 people from a steamship crash and was the inspiration for Mark Twain's famous character

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

Tom Sawyer is known to generations as one of the most beloved characters in American literature, but new research into the man that inspired the fictional child shows that his real life counterpart was a hard-drinking fire fighter-turned-barkeep.
Author Mark Twain was thought to have based his adventurous Southern child character on his acquaintance named Tom Sawyer, and the writer's admiration for his fire-fighting friend was so strong that he gave the character the man's name in homage.

Inspiration: Tom Sawyer (pictured) and Mark Twain first met in a San Francisco bath house in 1863 and the two became drinking buddies

A lengthy article published by The Smithsonian details the relationship between Twain, whose real name was Samuel Clemens, and Sawyer who met in a bath house in San Francisco during the mid 19th century.
The two had many adventures together, gambling in Nevada and drinking in seemingly every saloon that San Francisco had to offer.
Sawyer was born in Brooklyn and moved to California where he worked as a volunteer fire fighter, policeman and customs officer.
Sawyer and Twain connected over their shared experiences with steamboats. Before making his way out West, Sawyer used his notable strength to save 90 people from a fiery shipwreck.
Though such actions would rightfully earn anyone's respect, Twain was particularly moved by the story because his own brother died in a tragic fire while working on a similar steamboat.
The two men became fast friends after meeting in 1863, with Sawyer travelling to Virginia City, Nevada, at one point to visit Twain while he was working as a correspondent there.

Retiring to the bar: After many years as a volunteer fire fighter, Sawyer retired and worked running a saloon

After one particularly heady night once the two men returned to San Francisco, Twain put his infamous hallow leg to the test and proclaimed to his friend that he would base a character in his yet-unwritten book on him.
'He 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....How many copies will you take, Tom, half cash?"' Sawyer told a local reporter shortly after Twain's first usage of the character in a book in 1876. On another- potentially more sober- instance, Twain repeated the plan to Sawyer, who always referred to him by his given name.
'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,"' Sawyer said.
Besides their fondness of brandy, the two men also shared a propensity for storytelling, and Sawyer believed that it was his anecdotes about his own childhood inspired Twain to create a version of his friend in his child form.

The man named Sam: Sawyer called Twain (pictured) by his given name, Sam Clemens, and the two men initially bonded over their shared appreciation of steamboats

Growing city: The two had many adventures together, gambling in Nevada and drinking in seemingly every saloon that 19th-century San Francisco (pictured) had to offer

'We both was fond of telling stories and spinning yarns. Sam, 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 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,' Sawyer said.
Initially Twain said that the character of Tom Sawyer was based a compilation of three real people: John B. Briggs, William Bowen, and Twain himself.
In spite of such pronouncements, the historical evidence that Twain and the fire fighter version of Sawyer were close proves that there was likely a fourth, more prominent influencer in the creative mix.