Courtesy of Kevin Mac Donnell

One of Mac Donnell’s most intriguing finds surfaced at an antiques market in Washington state. The 1855 daguerreotype depicts a teen girl named Iowa Burns, who had once lived in Keokuk, Iowa. Scrawled phrases along the daguerreotype’s corners read “sweet sixteen," "Iowa Burns," "Keokuk Iowa," and "taken 1855 Mark Twain's sweetheart.” Pinned to the hinged panel opposite the portrait was a thin piece of paper, which said “Minnie Albert's sister Iowa Burns—sweetheart of Mark Twain." Also tucked inside the daguerreotype's case was a note, which said: "In 1855 Iowa Burns at 'sweet sixteen' a sweetheart of Mark Twain who lived across the street from her parents at Keokuk Iowa. Taken in 1855, a sister of my aunt Minnie Burns Albert, wife of T. G. Albert, Salem."

“The name Iowa Burns jumped out at me because I knew Twain had known a girl in Keokuk, Iowa, with the same name,” Mac Donnell says. “He’d written a poem and used her name to make a pun, so he clearly knew this girl and spent a lot of time with her.”

Additional research revealed that Twain’s brother, Orion Clemens, had conducted business with Iowa’s father, which explained how Twain and Iowa might have initially become acquainted. After pouring through Twain’s notebooks and comparing his descriptions of Iowa to the daguerreotype, Mac Donnell concluded that the girl in the picture was indeed “a lost sweetheart. She was [Twain’s] first adult girlfriend.”