Mark Twain

He was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens and grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, a town on the Mississippi River. When Clemens was around 11 or 12, his father died. Clemens left school and began working as a printer’s apprentice to help support his family.

At 21, Clemens left the printing business to pursue a career as a riverboat pilot. Clemens loved the Mississippi River and the riverboats. On a riverboat, a leadsman must give the depth of the water to the pilot. “Mark twain” means a water depth of 24’. Clemens took this as his pen name.

When the Civil War closed down the Mississippi River, Clemens moved to Nevada and worked as a journalist and lecturer. In 1865, he published “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” and became famous.

After publishing The Innocents Abroad in 1869, Clemens moved to Hartford, Connecticut where he lived the rest of his life. While in Hartford, Clemens, as Twain, published several more books including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn which is considered his masterpiece.