Christened as Samuel Langhorne Clemens, the man who would call himself Mark Twain was born on November 30, 1835 in the small river town of Florida, Missouri, just 200 miles from Indian Territory. The sixth child of John Marshall Clemens and Jane Lampton, Twain lived in Florida, Missouri until the age of four, at which time his family relocated to the town of Hannibal in hopes of improving their living situation.
By lineage, Twain was a Southerner, as both of his parents' families hailed from Virginia. The slaveholding community of Hannibal, a river town with a population of 2000, provided a mix of rugged frontier life and the Southern tradition, a lifestyle that influenced Twain's later...
