Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) was born on the 30th of November, 1835 in Florida, Missouri. He was the sixth of seven siblings. Twain's family moved to a small frontier town called Hannibal Missouri, when he was four years old. In 1847 Sam lost his father, when he was eleven years old. It was shortly after his father's death that he left school, having completed the fifth grade, and began working as a printer's apprentice for a local newspaper. His duties consisted of setting the type of each newspaper story, allowing him to be able to read the news as he did his job.
Samuel Clemens traveled east to New York City (and Philadelphia thereafter) at the age of 18 where he worked at a number of newspapers and did work as an article writers as well as setting type. By 1857 he found himself back in Missouri with a career as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, the traffic on the Mississippi River was affected, which of course put a quick end to Samuel's riverboat career. With the climate of war, Samuel joined a volunteer Confederate unit, but quit after only two weeks of service.
After abandoning life as a soldier, Samuel was invited to the west by his brother. He accepted the invitation in search of a career and headed west in July of 1861. Lured to the west by the prospect of striking it rich in Nevada's silver rush, Samuel traveled from Missouri to Nevada by stagecoach. It was during this trek where Samuel encountered Native American tribes for the very first time as well as many colorful characters, happenings and disappointments. It was events and experiences from this journey that later found their way into his short stories and books, especially Roughing It.
After having failed as a silver prospector in Nevada, Samuel Clemens found employment writing for the Territorial Enterprise, in Virginia City, Nevada. It was there that he began using his now famous pen name, Mark Twain. His continued wanderings finally took him to San Francisco in 1864, where he continued his career as a writer, writing for local publications.
Mark Twain's first big break came in the form of the publication of his short story, Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog, in papers across the country. It was from there on that his writing flourished into the lustrous career we know today.
Mark Twain married Olivia Langdon in 1870, after a two year courtship. They made their home in Buffalo, New York where Samuel had made partner, editor and writer for the Buffalo Express, a daily newspaper.
Mark Twain's life saw many twists and turns the rest of his years. His fame and fortune afforded him to travel around the world, experiencing humanity in all its forms. These experiences later became the subjects of his books. In his later writings he became dark and questioned the goodness of the human race. With his increasing criticism of the powers that be, he was labeled by some as a traitor. But it is for his wonderful writings that we remember him, and his contribution to the world of literature, but not for the labels that some chose to cast upon him.
After losing his wife in 1904, he continued to live in New York until 1908, and thereafter moved to his house in Redding, Connecticut. It was a year thereafter when his middle daughter Clara was married, and during the same year Jean, the youngest daughter, passed away from an epileptic seizure. Four months later on the 21st of April, 1910, Sam Clemens died at the age of 74.