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| Marker on lot where Sam Clemens was born |
If you were asked to name a person from Missouri, you'd probably say either Mark Twain or President Harry S. Truman. Mark Twain is most closely associated with Hannibal, Missouri, which has profited greatly from the association. From the authentic, to the invented to kitsch, you can find it in Hannibal. You can also find tons of tourists. Gives me the willies just thinking about it.
Mark Twain has been one of my favorite authors since just about the time that I could read. Huckleberry Finn was one of the first prizes that I won by memorizing quotes (third grade). Even got me through 11th grade Literature. I know it's no longer a "politically correct" book because of its liberal use of a certain word, especially in association with a particular character. You know the one I'm talking about. That's right, ol' Jedi Jim. It is a temporally correct book, however and serves as a relatively unvarnished view of life in antebellum Missouri's "Little Dixie".
While the summer crowds in Hannibal do not appeal to me, Nadienne and I thought that a visit to the spot where Mark Twain was born as Samuel Langhorne Clemens would be fun. So off we trekked to the tiny town of Florida, Missouri. Twain spent the first four years of his life here, as his father tried to get a transport business running on the Salt River nearby. The river was fickle, making it impossible to sustain a regular delivery route and so the family was off to Hannibal.
Mark Twain remarks on his birthplace
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| Two story log house near Twain's birth site marker |
"I was born the 30th of November, 1835, in the almost invisible village of Florida, Monroe County, Missouri. I suppose Florida had less than three hundred inhabitants. It had two streets, each a couple of hundred yards long; the rest of the avenues mere lanes, with rail fences and cornfields on either side. Both the streets and the lanes were paved with the same material--tough black mud in wet times, deep dust in dry."
"Most of the houses were of logs--all of them, indeed, except three or four; these latter were frame ones. There were none of brick, and none of stone. There was a log church, with a puncheon floor and slab benches. A puncheon floor is made of logs whose upper surfaces have been chipped flat with the adz. The cracks between the logs were not filled; there was no carpet; consequently, if you dropped anything smaller than a peach, it was likely to go through. The church was perched upon short sections of logs, which elevated it two or three feet from the ground. Hogs slept under there, and whenever the dogs got after them during services, the minister had to wait till the disturbance was over. In winter there was always a refreshing breeze up through the puncheon floor; in summer there were fleas enough for all."
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| Twain Birthplace House with slab bench in front |
"A slab bench is made of the outside cut of a saw-log, with the bark side down; it is supported on four sticks driven into auger holes at the ends; it has no back and no cushions. The church was twilighted with yellow tallow candles in tin sconces hung against the walls. Week days, the church was a schoolhouse." - Mark Twain "Early years in Florida, Missouri" from
Mark Twain's Autobiography
Twain thought that Florida was an almost invisible town during his time, but what we found was that Twain's Florida was the big time. A few houses exist on the town site. A few streets and the cemetery. The entire population of Florida in 2010 was a whopping 9 residents.And the Twain marker, but that is about it. The railroad and time have passed this little hamlet by.
"Recently some one in Missouri has sent me a picture of the house I was born in. Heretofore I have always stated that it was a palace, but I shall be more guarded now." - Mark Twain
Museum musts
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| Preface to Tom Sawyer handwritten by Mark Twain |
The Mark Twain Birthplace Shrine holds the two-room house in which Sam Clemens was born, as well as a collection of manuscripts, furniture and a carriage that belonged to the family. These items are mostly on loan from other museums. The display I enjoyed the most housed handwritten manuscript pages that were the preface for
Tom Sawyer. The good old days, when penmanship was somewhat important, and you could submit a manuscript written long-hand. Anything that I publish has to be written in a word processing program, formatted to the hilt and include publication ready figures.
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| Twain family carriage |
Is this really the house?
While reading articles about Florida, Missouri and the state park, I was surprised to find out that there was any kind of debate over whether the house on display is the authentic birthplace of Samuel Clemens. A birthplace was mentioned in an 1890 article explaining that the house had been sold and was to be moved to Chicago for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. The move was too costly, and the house stayed in Florida. In 1897, a buyer proposed to cut the house up into souvenir articles. Accounts of the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis state that canes were sold, purportedly made of wood from the birthplace. One of the houses pointed out as a Twain birthplace was probably the second house that the Clemens' lived in during their time in Florida. Mark Twain himself deemed the house "too stylish" (perhaps tongue in cheek) to be his birthplace. It was this house that had been broken up and sold as canes.
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| Birthplace cabin in Florida |
The house located in the Mark Twain Birthplace Shrine was pointed out to Twain biographer Albert Bigelow Paine in 1907 as the Twain birthplace by Eliza Damrell Violette Scott, a Florida resident who had been fourteen at the time of Sam's birth and knew the Clemens. Eliza's son, Merritt A. "Dad" Violette bought the house in 1915 from owners who were going to tear the house down as it was in such bad disrepair. Violette moved the house across the street, started repairs on the house and eventually turned it into an attraction that grew into a resort: campsites, cabins, and a clubhouse. He gradually made repairs on the house and gave tours for years.
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| Birthplace cabin at the time of Paine's visit |
Paine's visit to Florida planted the spark to preserve the birthplace. Violette turned it into an attraction and one of the campers at Violette's resort, Ruth Lamson took on the challenge of creating a state park that would preserve the cabin. Lamson and her father, Frank helped form the Mark Twain Memorial Association in 1923. Mark Twain State Park would be dedicated very soon, in 1924. The house in the shrine was moved to the park site in June 1930. It was originally housed in little more than a shed with wired windows, but it provided respite from the elements. There it stood until the shrine was opened in 1960.
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| Samuel L. Clemens at 15 |
Almost as soon as the park was formed, the authenticity of the house was called into question. Most of the people who would have known the history of the house had left Florida or were dead. The most authoritative account of the origins of the house came from Violette, who got the information from his mother. When materials in the house were analyzed, it was found that much of the material came from a time after the Clemens' occupation. This doesn't seem to be a surprising find. When Violette bought the house, it had lost its windows, chimney and a lean-to kitchen had collapsed. There were no standards for historical preservation and renovation at the time. Violette did what he could to make the house presentable, structurally sound and faithful to the original layout.
At one time, Violette had asserted that the house was composed of 80% original period material, which it isn't. Does this diminish the importance of the house? Ask the people who still line up to see Da Vinci's "Last Supper", Michelangelo's "Pieta" and "Sistine Chapel", any number of frontier forts in the US or just about any place older than 50 years. All will have undergone upkeep and restoration. They are an approximation of the "real", but they remain "authentic". The house is not the important thing here, it is just the main draw into the birthplace shrine, where many will learn much more about Mark Twain than they would have otherwise. Twain would have gotten a chuckle over academic arguments about the house. He likely would have pointed out that you can argue about what ramshackle house he was born in, but he was born in a ramshackle house, and it might as well have been this one as any other.
Twain reflects on his first birthday at his seventieth
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| Sam Clemens in his Oxford academic robe |
"I remember that first birthday well," he began. "Whenever I think of it, it is with indignation. Everything was so crude, so unaesthetic. Nothing was really ready. I was born, you know, with a high and delicate aesthetic taste. And then think of - I had no hair, no teeth, no clothes. And I had to go to my first banquet like that.
"And everybody came swarming in. It was the merest little hamlet in he backwoods of Missouri, where never anything happened at all. All interest centered on me that day. They came with that peculiar provincial curiosity to look me over and to see if I had brought anything fresh in my particular line. Why, I was the only thing that had happened in the last three months - and I came very near being the only thing that happened there in two whole years.
"They gave their opinions. No one had asked them, but they gave them, and they were all just green with prejudice. I stood it as long as - well, you know, I was born courteous. I stood it for about an hour. Then the worm turned. I was the worm. It was my turn to turn, and I did turn. I knew the strength of my position. I knew that I was the only spotlessly pure person in that camp, and I just came out and told them so.
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| Twain at work on Tom Sawyer |
"It was so true that they could make no answer at all. They merely blushed and went away. Well, that was my cradle song, and now I am singing my swan song. It is a far stretch from that first birthday to this, the seventieth. Just think of it!"
'Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a
funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.'
"Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please."
"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."
"Always acknowledge a fault frankly. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you opportunity to commit more."
Getting There
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| Mark Twain Birthplace Shrine |
The Mark Twain Birthplace Shrine is just outside of Florida, Missouri near Mark Twain Lake. Easiest access is probably from the north. From US-36 take US-24 west at Monroe City. From US-24, take MO-107 south to County Rd. 526 towards Florids (left). Turn right on Shrine Road and you will see the birthplace at the end of the drive. From the south, you are on your own.
Waypoint: Latitude 39.488239 N; Longitude 91.785910 W
Street Address: 37352 Shrine Rd., Stoutsville, MO 65283
Further Reading
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