Mark Twain

The cabin no longer stands in the open. It sits inside a modern museum building at the Mark Twain Birthplace State Historic Site, which also holds a public reading room, first editions of Twain's books, furnishings from his Connecticut home and a handwritten manuscript of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, his 1876 novel. Samuel Clemens spent his first four years in the two-room house. It joined the National Register in 1969, and the site sits on a peninsula at the western end of Mark Twain Lake, a man-made reservoir, beside Mark Twain State Park.

What the plaque says

Mark Twain 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 near Florida 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. (See other side) Erected by State Historical Society of Missouri and State Highway Commission, 1953 Mark Twain (Continued from other side) 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 north- east 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. Erected by State Historical Society of Missouri and State Highway Commission, 1953

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Union Covered Bridge State Historic Site — 17 mi
  An 1871 oak bridge over the Elk Fork of the Salt River on the old Paris to Fayette road, the last Burr-arch covered bridge in Missouri, mended after a century of floods.
• Jim's Journey: The Huck Finn Freedom Center — 28 mi
  Hannibal's first African American history museum, built around Daniel Quarles, the enslaved man Clemens named as his model for Jim, and the Black town around him.
• Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum — 28 mi
  The Hill Street house where Samuel Clemens lived from 1844 to 1853, and the blocks of Hannibal the town has spent more than a century arranging around his books.

More markers nearby

• New London — 22 mi
• Mexico — 23 mi
• Palmyra — 26 mi