John Marshall Clemens

John Marshall Clemens (August 11, 1798 – March 24, 1847) was the father of author Mark Twain.

Biography

Clemens was the scion of a Virginia family that owned both land and slaves in that state. The Clemenses were a Cornish American family originally from Looe in Cornwall, England.^[1] He was born in Campbell County, Virginia, the eldest of five children, to Samuel B. and Pamela Goggin Clemens.^[2] He was named after U.S. Chief Justice John Marshall.

His father died in 1805, whereupon the family moved to Kentucky. Pamela Clemens remarried in 1809, and John Clemens started working at age 11, as a clerk at an iron mine.^[2] Later in his youth he undertook the study of law in a local law office and became a licensed attorney at the age of 21.^[2] At that same age, he became legally responsible for financial obligations deemed to be owed to his Kentucky stepfather for the costs of supporting the Clemens children and family slaves. The burden of this debt left him without financial resources.^[2]

He married Jane Lampton in 1823 moved to Fentress County, Tennessee, where he practiced law, operated a general store, and served as a county commissioner, county clerk, and acting attorney general. From 1832 to 1835 he was postmaster in Pall Mall.^[2] He speculated unsuccessfully in land and opened four stores which were unsuccessful.

In 1835 the Clemens family, which by then included five children, moved to Missouri, initially to Florida, where his son Samuel,^[3] who was to become famous as the author Mark Twain, was born in November 1835. John Clemens practiced law and operated a general store in Florida for several years before moving to Hannibal in 1839. His retail business ventures were not successful, but he was active in civic affairs.^[2] He served as a steamboat and railroad commissioner and became a county judge. He served in the Missouri militia but did not serve in the debacle of the Honey War.

John Clemens was the father of five sons (including Orion Clemens) and two daughters. He died in March 1847 from pleurisy and pneumonia.^[2]

Cabin

The cabin in which the Clemens family is believed to have lived in Fentress County, Tennessee, is displayed as part of the collection of the Museum of Appalachia in Norris, Tennessee.^[4]

References

↑ Payton, Philip. The Cornish Overseas, 2005
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Oliver and Goldena Howard (1993), The Mark Twain encyclopedia, pp. 153–4
↑ Andrew Hoffmann (April 27, 1997). "Inventing Mark Twain". New York Times.
↑ Information obtained from museum interpretive sign inside the cabin, 1 May 2009.

Mark Twain

Bibliography

Novels	The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today The Adventures of Tom Sawyer The Prince and the Pauper Adventures of Huckleberry Finn A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court The American Claimant Tom Sawyer Abroad Pudd'nhead Wilson Tom Sawyer, Detective Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc A Double Barrelled Detective Story A Horse's Tale The Mysterious Stranger Hellfire Hotchkiss

Short stories	"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" "Cannibalism in the Cars" "General Washington's Negro Body-Servant" "My Late Senatorial Secretaryship" "Some Learned Fables for Good Old Boys and Girls" "A Literary Nightmare" "A Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage" "The Invalid's Story" "The Great Revolution in Pitcairn" "1601" "The Stolen White Elephant" "Luck" "The Million Pound Bank Note" "Those Extraordinary Twins" "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg" "A Dog's Tale" "Extracts from Adam's Diary" "The War Prayer" "Eve's Diary" "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven" "My Platonic Sweetheart" "The Private Life of Adam and Eve" "Advice to Little Girls"

Short story collections	Mark Twain's (Burlesque) Autobiography and First Romance Sketches New and Old A True Story and the Recent Carnival of Crime Punch, Brothers, Punch! and Other Sketches Mark Twain's Library of Humor Merry Tales The £1,000,000 Bank Note and Other New Stories The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories The Curious Republic of Gondour and Other Whimsical Sketches The Washoe Giant in San Francisco

Plays	Is He Dead? Colonel Sellers Colonel Sellers as a Scientist

Essays	"The Awful German Language" "Advice to Youth" "English As She Is Taught" How to Tell a Story and Other Essays "Concerning the Jews" "A Salutation Speech From the Nineteenth Century to the Twentieth" "To the Person Sitting in Darkness" "To My Missionary Critics" "Edmund Burke on Croker and Tammany" "What Is Man?" "Queen Victoria's Jubilee" "The United States of Lyncherdom" "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" Letters from the Earth

Non-fiction	Territorial Enterprise letters Letters from Hawaii The Innocents Abroad Roughing It Old Times on the Mississippi A Tramp Abroad Life on the Mississippi Following the Equator Is Shakespeare Dead? Autobiography of Mark Twain Mark Twain's Notebook King Leopold's Soliloquy The Private History of a Campaign That Failed Mark Twain's Weapons of Satire The Bible According to Mark Twain Christian Science

Speeches	"Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism" Votes for Women

Places, events, and legacy	Conception Birthplace Historic Site State Park Boyhood Home and Museum Mark Twain Cave Mark Twain in Nevada Territorial Enterprise Sagebrush School Mark Twain House, Hartford, Connecticut Stormfield Publisher, Ulysses S. Grant's memoirs Twain–Ament indemnities controversy Mark Twain Prize for American Humor Mark Twain Tonight! Mark Twain: The Musical In popular culture

Family	Olivia Langdon Clemens (wife) Susy Clemens (daughter) Clara Clemens (daughter) Jean Clemens (daughter) John M. Clemens (father) Orion Clemens (brother)

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 7/16/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.