Author Details
Author Details
Twain, Mark
"John Marshall Clemens settled in Fentress County, Tennessee, in the 1820's on the Cumberland Plateau near the Obed River. His home was on the site of Jamestown's post office. He was the town's first postmaster.
In 1827, he drew the plans for the first courthouse and jail, one of the first government buildings in county, a two-story log building completed in 1828.
Clemens was a member of the Jamestown bar and practiced law in the early 1830's. He was Attorney General pro-tem, 1828-1833, and held the office of Circuit Court Clerk, 1828-1835.
He obtained grants from the state for more than 75,000 acres of land, which sold for 10 to 50 cents per acre after his death.
Clemens left Tennessee with his family in the spring of 1835. He was a lawyer and now a merchant, but not too prosperous. The family fortunes improved in Missouri.
On November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, their fourth child, was born. It is possible that he was conceived in Tennessee.
In 1839 John Clemens moved to Hannibal on the Mississippi River and established himself again as a small merchant. He eventually abandoned business and resumed the practice of law.
He was elected Justice of the Peace and was on his way to better things when he died a fairly young man, in 1847.
The boy Sam, only 11 years old, was taken from school and soon apprenticed to learn the printer's trade. He remained an apprentice until his brother Orion Clemens bought a small newspaper, the 'Hannibal Journal,' and moved it into the Clemens home. The two brothers ran it, and Sam set most of the type.
It was on the 'Hannibal Journal' that Sam Clemens began his writing. He wrote burlesques of local characters and conditions, usually published in his brother's absence and resulting in trouble when his brother returned. But they made the paper sell.
In 1853 young Sam Clemens, then about 18, set out to see the world. His writing and his travels took him to Virginia City, Nevada, as editor of the 'Enterprise.'
It was here that he began signing his articles 'Mark Twain,' a river term signifying two fathoms of water. In time the name Samuel Clemens was almost forgotten. But not in Jamestown, Tennessee.
Mark Twain Park, across the street from the post office where his father worked and lived is the location of a spring, the town's first source of drinking water.
The Mark Twain Inn, a restaurant, is a block away.
He wrote of Jamestown, Tennessee, in one of his books, calling it Obedtown, named for the river nearby. However, Mark Twain never lived in Tennessee. "
