Mark Twain Birthplace State Historic Site

Mark Twain Birthplace
State Historic Site
An interior room of the cabin
LocationMonroe County, Missouri, United States
Coordinates39°29′18″N 91°47′09″W / 39.4884°N 91.7857°W / 39.4884; -91.7857[1]
Area13 acres (5.3 ha)[2]
Elevation633 ft (193 m)[1]
Established1924[3]
Visitors59,002 (in 2022)[4]
OperatorMissouri Department of Natural Resources
Websitemostateparks.com/park/mark-twain-birthplace-state-historic-site
Mark Twain Birthplace Cabin
NRHP reference No.69000116
Added to NRHPMay 21, 1969

The Mark Twain Birthplace State Historic Site is a publicly owned property in Florida, Missouri, maintained by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, that preserves the cabin where the author Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in 1835.[5] The cabin is protected within a modern museum building that also includes a public reading room, several of Twain's first editions, a handwritten manuscript of his 1876 novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and furnishings from Twain's Connecticut home.[5] The historic site is adjacent to Mark Twain State Park on a peninsula at the western end of man-made Mark Twain Lake. The cabin was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969.[6]

Samuel Clemens, later known by the pen name Mark Twain, was born in the two-room house on November 30, 1835.[7] The house was rented by his parents Jane Lampton Clemens (1803–1890) and John Marshall Clemens (1798–1847).[8] Clemens spent his first four years here until the family moved to a two-story clapboard house, now memorialized as the Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum in Hannibal, Missouri, in 1839.[9]

References

  1. ^ a b "Mark Twain Birthplace State Historic Site". Geographic Names Information System. United States Geological Survey, United States Department of the Interior.
  2. ^ "Missouri State Park Advisory Board Annual Report 2008". Missouri Department of Natural Resources. April 3, 2009. Retrieved November 3, 2015.
  3. ^ "State Park Land Acquisition Summary". Missouri State Parks. August 25, 2011. Retrieved November 3, 2015.
  4. ^ "Missouri State Park Attendance For January - December, 2022" (PDF). Missouri State Parks. February 3, 2023.
  5. ^ a b "Mark Twain Birthplace State Historic Site". Missouri Department of Natural Resources. December 10, 2010. Retrieved November 16, 2012.
  6. ^ "Mark Twain Birthplace Cabin". NPGallery. National Park Service. Retrieved May 21, 2018.
  7. ^ Andrew Hoffman. "Inventing Mark Twain". The New York Times Company. Retrieved November 3, 2015.
  8. ^ Christie Graves Hamric (January 1, 1993). The Mark Twain Encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis. pp. 152–154. ISBN 978-0-8240-7212-4.
  9. ^ Martha L. Kusiak, Research Historian (April 10, 1969). "Mark Twain Birthplace Cabin" (PDF). National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form. Missouri Department of Natural Resources. Retrieved November 3, 2015.