When the family summered in Olivia Clemens’s hometown of Elmira, New York, in 1880, she hired a 24-year old Irish woman, Catherine Leary, as maid. Always known to the family as “Katy,” for thirty years she worked as their seamstress, nursemaid, nanny, and lady’s maid.

“Katy was a potent influence, all over the premises,” Samuel Clemens wrote of her. “Fidelity, truthfulness, courage, magnanimity, personal dignity, a pole-star for steadiness—these were her equipment, along with a heart of Irish warmth, quick Irish wit, and a large good store of the veiled & shimmering & half surreptitious humor which is the best feature of the ‘American’ brand—or of any brand, for that matter.”

In addition to brushing and styling Olivia Clemens’s hair, Leary cared for Samuel’s as well. He “had a horror of being baldheaded,” she recalled, and thought that a scalp massage would preserve his abundant mane of hair. Leary performed this task for him on a daily basis. In gratitude, the author presented Leary with a portrait of himself, inscribed “To Katy Leary from her friend Mark Twain.” The inscription, fittingly, is nestled in the author’s hair in the photograph.

Leary also provided important personal support for the family, being present at the deaths of daughter Susy in 1896, Olivia in 1904, daughter Jean in 1909, and finally Samuel himself in 1910. Her dictated 1925 memoir, A Lifetime with Mark Twain, displayed complete loyalty to the family: “I didn’t think of the money I was earning, and I never interfered in any way with them. I wouldn’t ever do it – they came first – And I did it because I loved them and they was so good to me – just like I was one of their own.”

After Samuel’s death she worked for the sole surviving Clemens family member, middle daughter Clara, for a short period. She then ran a boarding house in New York City while living on a $10,000 bequest from Clemens and a monthly pension from Clara. In 1922, Leary returned to Elmira and lived the remainder of her years in the home she inherited from her parents. Leary is buried in Elmira’s Saint Peter and Paul’s Catholic cemetery with her sister, across town from the Clemens and Langdon families.