Noah Brooks began his newspaper career in Boston at the age of eighteen, but six years later he went west, eventually settling in California, where he founded the Marysville Appeal. During the Civil War he served as Washington correspondent for the Sacramento Union, and was reputedly the last journalist to interview Abraham Lincoln. After the war he became managing editor of the San Francisco Alta California, when became acquainted with Clemens, initially through their mutual friend Bret Harte (Brooks contributed short fiction, as did Clemens, to Harte's Overland Monthly). Brooks was the managing editor of the Alta California when Clemens undertook the Quaker City voyage in 1867 as an Alta correspondent (furnishing the material for Innocents Abroad). In 1871 Brooks started working for the New York Tribune, and in 1876 he became the editor of the New York Times. Retiring in 1892, he spent the rest of his life publishing travel literature and memoirs. In his Autobiography, Clemens recalled that Brooks was "a man of sterling character and equipped with a right heart, also a good historian where facts were not essential" (AutoMT1, 228).