Mark Twains birthplace home - Florida MO - Relocated Structures on Waymarking.com

The Mark Twain birthplace home in Florida MO was relocated to a climate controlled shrine not far from the original location, the building also has a museum dedicated to Mark Twain.

Below is text from a marker at the original site of the home.

THE TOWN OF FLORIDA
BIRTHPLACE OF MARK TWAIN

Florida, Mo., a settlement of about 60 families and several businesses, "...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 lanes were paved with the same material - tough black mud in wet times, deep dust in dry."


Florida reached its zenith before the Civil War. During this period, one of the general stores was briefly owned by John Marshall Clemens, Mark Twain's father. Florida was destined to remain small. The Salt River was never navigable for steamboats. Railroad companies were not interested in building a line to the tiny village. The Community was relatively isolated from large towns.


The Clemens family, consisting of John Marshall and his wife Jane, their children Orion, Pamela, Margaret, Benjamin, and a slave girl named Jenny, arrived in the small village of Florida, MO., late in June 1835. They had made the long trip by riverboat and wagon all the way from Pall Mall, Tenn., at the urging of Jane's brother-in-law, John Charles Quarles. After arriving in Florida, John Clemens rented the two-room frame house where Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born (two months premature) in November.


Mark Twain noted in his Autobiography, "Recently someone 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."

Original Location: N 39° 29.556 W 091° 47.202 How it was moved: Disassembled Type of move: Inside City Building Status: Museum Related Website: [Web Link]

Visit Instructions:
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Date Logged Log User Rating   04/05/2013 BruceS visited it 07/12/2011 kJfishman visited it 10/05/2006 YoSam. visited it

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