Help Find This Mystery Man!

I got an e-mail from a reader asking me to help figure out who a specific man of mystery is. Since I don’t know, I thought I’d throw it out to you to see if you can help.

Here’s the background from RKMW:

We are looking to find out who the man on all of our door-knobs is. The house was originally built around 1850, renovated around turn of the century (doorknobs are in keeping with late 1800 to early 1900 style, so probably from turn of the century). Later renovations preserved architectural details (including the doorknobs).

We believe it was originally a single family home, but later came to be a "family hotel", and we've seen letters indicating that immediately after the 1904 fire, one of the counsel for the B&O Railroad either lived there or had offices there (or both).

The suspicion is that it is Mark Twain, and that all of the knobs were added during the early 1900’s renovation, but Twain doesn’t have a close enough connection with Baltimore for that to be the case – unless someone was a huge fan.

There’s an auction site with the same doorknob, describing it as Mark Twain, but I am still doubtful.

Because many of the early building records were destroyed during a massive fire that leveled Baltimore in 1904, it’s often hard to find early records. The house was designed by some “famous local architects”, so once I find out who they are, I can check some of our records at the Baltimore Architecture Foundation and see if there’s any information.

Here’s another view from an auction house that lists it as “thought to be Mark Twain”.

Usually, the images of Mark Twain have him with much wilder hair.

So, any thoughts to help identify our mystery man?