John Marshall Clemens
John Marshall Clemens (August 11, 1798 – March 24, 1847) was the father of author Mark Twain and of journalist and politician Orion Clemens, who was the first and only Secretary of the Nevada Territory.
Biography
Clemens was the scion of a Virginia family that owned both land and slaves in that state. The Clemens were said to be a Cornish American family originally from Looe in Cornwall, England.[1] However, the Looe museum provides evidence showing that they instead emigrated from Corby.[2] He was born in Campbell County, Virginia, the eldest of five children, to Samuel B. and Pamela Goggin Clemens.[3] 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.[3] He undertook the study of law in a local law office and became a licensed lawyer at the age of 21.[3] 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 keeping family slaves. The burden of this debt left him without financial resources.[3]
He married Jane Lampton on May 6, 1823, in Columbia, Adair County, Kentucky.[4] She was a religiously conservative Presbyterian, while he was an agnostic freethinker who admired Thomas Paine. They 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 as a conservative Whig. From 1832 to 1835 he was postmaster in Pall Mall.[3] He speculated unsuccessfully in land and opened four stores which were unsuccessful.[5]
In 1835 the Clemens family, which by then included five children, moved to Missouri, initially to the town of Florida, where his son Samuel,[6] who was to become famous as the author Mark Twain, was born on November 30, 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.[3] 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) and two daughters. He died in March 1847 from pleurisy and pneumonia. His widow suspected syphilis was involved and ordered an autopsy which the young Samuel Clemens may have witnessed.[3][5]
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.[7]
References
- ^ Payton, Philip. The Cornish Overseas, 2005
- ^ "Was Mark Twain Cornish?". Looe Old Guildhall Museum and Gaol. Retrieved 2021-07-01.
- ^ a b c d e f g Oliver and Goldena Howard (1993), The Mark Twain encyclopedia, pp. 153–4, ISBN 9780824072124
- ^ "Kentucky, County Marriages, 1797-1954," database with images, FamilySearch.org
- ^ a b Harold K. Bush, Mark Twain and the Spiritual Crisis of His Age (2007) pp. 30–36.
- ^ Andrew Hoffmann (April 27, 1997). "Inventing Mark Twain". New York Times.
- ^ Information obtained from museum interpretive sign inside the cabin, 1 May 2009.
- v
- t
- e
- 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
- "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County"
- "Cannibalism in the Cars"
- "A Literary Nightmare"
- "A Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage"
- "The Great Revolution in Pitcairn"
- "1601"
- "The Stolen White Elephant"
- "Luck"
- "The Million Pound Bank Note"
- "A Double Barrelled Detective Story"
- "Those Extraordinary Twins"
- "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg"
- "A Dog's Tale"
- "Extracts from Adam's Diary"
- "The War Prayer"
- "Eve's Diary"
- "Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven"
- "My Platonic Sweetheart"
- "Advice for Good Little Girls"
- Mark Twain's (Burlesque) Autobiography and First Romance
- Sketches New and Old
- 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 Awful German Language"
- "On the Decay of the Art of Lying"
- "Advice to Youth"
- How to Tell a Story and Other Essays
- "Concerning the Jews"
- "To the Person Sitting in Darkness"
- "Edmund Burke on Croker and Tammany"
- "What Is Man?"
- "The United States of Lyncherdom"
- "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses"
- Letters from the Earth
- 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 (Chapters from My Autobiography)
- King Leopold's Soliloquy
- The Private History of a Campaign That Failed
- Christian Science
- "Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism"
- "Votes for Women"
and events
- Mark Twain Prize for American Humor
- Mark Twain Tonight!
- The Adventures of Mark Twain (1944)
- The Adventures of Mark Twain (1985)
- Mark Twain (2001 documentary)
- Twain and Shaw Do Lunch (2011 play)
- Mark Twain: The Musical
- Olivia Langdon Clemens (wife)
- Susy Clemens (daughter)
- Clara Clemens (daughter)
- Jean Clemens (daughter)
- John M. Clemens (father)
- Jane Lampton Clemens (mother)
- Orion Clemens (brother)