Clemens almost certainly misdated his letter by one day. He probably returned home from Boston on the morning of 18 February, but even if he took a late evening train after introducing Kingsley, it seems unlikely that he answered Oldroyd before that morning.

Osborn Hamiline Oldroyd (1842–1930) was, at this time, a steward (not an inmate) at the Southern Ohio Lunatic Asylum in Dayton, Ohio. His letter to Clemens does not survive, but it presumably made these facts plain. A Civil War veteran, Oldroyd specialized in collecting Lincoln memorabilia. On 26 May 1880 he again wrote Clemens, asking for “Sentiments on the life and Services of Abraham Lincoln” to be placed on exhibit in a “Memorial Hall” he hoped to build at the Lincoln Tomb in Springfield, Illinois (CU-MARK). (This building was evidently to be in addition to the memorial hall already there by late 1875.) Clemens did not reply to this later letter. Oldroyd did establish a Lincoln museum, housing it from 1883 to 1893 in the Lincoln home in Springfield and afterward moving it to Petersen House in Washington, where Lincoln had died. On 1 September 1926 he sold his collection, which by then contained more than three thousand items, to the United States government for $50,000. Oldroyd also wrote and edited several works about Lincoln (New York Times: “Lincoln Devotee Ends Long Years of Labor,” 19 Sept 1926, sec. 10:13; Hartford Courant: “The Lincoln Memorial,” 30 Nov 75, 1; “O. H. Oldroyd Dies,” 9 Oct 1930, 27; information courtesy of Robert Rosenthal and Ben Stone, Department of Special Collections, University of Chicago Library; Oldroyd, viii; Illinois, 394–95).