Samuel Langhorne Clemens born in Florida, MO
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, later known as Mark Twain is born in the small town of Florida, Mo. He is the sixth child of John Marshall, a judge and Jane Lampton Clemens. When Clemens is four his family moves to Hannibal, MO, a bigger city with more opportunity for his father’s law practice. As a child he lives in a two-story frame house. In early childhood Clemens is largely kept indoors because it is thought he has weak lungs, but this passes by the time he is nine, when he is able to be educated outside the home and attends a private school.
The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop. The greatest inspiration I had for my writing was my mother, my friend Will Bowen and the slaves and others that I encountered as a child.
Mark Twain dies at 74
Twain dies from a heart condition at his home in Danbury, CT. Too weak to speak, he writes a note asking for his glasses to read Carlyle’s French Revolution but then pushes them away, falls unconscious and dies a few hours later. His one surviving daughter, Clara and her husband, as well as his biographer, are with him as he dies. He is also survived by a niece and nephew who were on their way to his bedside when he died.