Mark Twain

Side 1: Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) was born in the nearby village of Florida, Nov. 30, 1835. His birthplace was given to the Mark Twain Memorial Park Association by M. A. Violette, 1924, and is maintained as a museum. The two-room clapboard house was rented by Twain's parents, John M. and Jane Lampton Clemens, upon their arrival here from Tennessee, 1835. Before it was moved to the park, 1930, it had been moved once before and had seen use as a printing office, grain storage shed, and cow shelter. Twain spent many summers on his Uncle John Quarles' farm nearby here after his parents moved, in 1839, to Hannibal, Mo. It was from his boyhood in Hannibal and here that he drew material for Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. In 1853, Twain left a job on his brother Orion's Hannibal newspaper to become a printer, a Mississippi River pilot, and a miner, writer, and lecturer in the West, where he adopted the pen name, Mark Twain (two fathoms—a river measure). In 1870 he married Olivia Langdon. He died April 21, 1910, and is buried in Elmira, N. Y. Side 2: Mark Twain State Park, beautiful tract of woodland along the South Fork of Salt River, was given the State, 1924, by the Mark Twain Memorial Park Association, formed by the country editors of northeast Missouri, 1923. The State has added to the original gift. The Bringhurst bust of Twain in Florida was erected by the State, 1913. In Hannibal are the State statue of Twain by Hibbard; his statue of Tom and Huck; the Mark Twain Museum and Home; Becky Thatcher House; Mark Twain Cave; and other sites. In Florida's cemetery are buried Twain's sister and other relatives. Located at Perry, to the southeast, is the Mark Twain Research Foundation and its collections. The State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia, has a noted collection of Twain's writings and a file of Hannibal newspapers on which he worked. It is of interest that General U. S. Grant's first assignment of the Civil War brought him to Florida, July, 1861. He was looking for Col. T. A. Harris who had withdrawn.