DID YOU KNOW?
When he was nine years old, he saw a local man murder a cattle rancher, and at 10 he watched an enslaved person die after a white overseer struck him with a piece of iron.
Mark Twain, wife Olivia (Livy), and 3 daughters
Mark Twain Boyhood Home in Hannibal, Missouri
Mark Twain Home in Hartford, Connecticut
In July 1861, Twain climbed on board a stagecoach and headed for Nevada and California, where he would live for the next five years. At first, he prospected for silver and gold, convinced that he would
Hannibal inspired several of Twain's fictional locales, including "St. Petersburg" in "Tom Sawyer and
Huckleberry Finn.” These imaginary river towns are complex places: sunlit and exuberant on the one hand, but also vipers' nests of cruelty, poverty, drunkenness, loneliness, and soul-crushing boredom; all parts of Twain's boyhood experience.
Samuel kept up his schooling until he was about 12 years old, with his father dead and the family needing a source of income, he found employment as an apprentice printer at the “Hannibal Courier.”
In 1851, at 15, he got a job as a printer and occasional writer and editor at the “Hannibal Western Union,” a little newspaper owned by his brother, Orion.
Then, in 1857, 21-year-old Twain fulfilled a dream, he began learning the art of piloting a steamboat on the Mississippi River and was a licensed Steamboat pilot by 1859.
However, his service was cut short in 1861 by the outbreak of the Civil War, which halted most civilian traffic on the river. As the Civil War began, the people of Missouri angrily split between support for the Union and the Confederate States. Twain opted for the latter, joining the Confederate Army in June 1861 but serving for only a couple of weeks until his volunteer unit disbanded.