Samuel L. Clemens was born in the small village of Florida, Missouri on November 30, 1835. His family moved from there to Hannibal, Missouri in mid November of 1839. Sam stayed there until the age of seventeen when he set out to see the world and support himself. His years in Hannibal provided the background for his best known books, "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn".

On February 16, 1857, Sam Clemens took passage from Cincinnati, Ohio on board the packet Paul Jones, piloted by Horace Bixby. Somewhere along the journey Bixby agreed to teach Sam to pilot a Mississippi River Boat. On March 4, 1857, they departed New Orleans on board the Colonel Crossman with Horace as pilot and Sam as his cub pilot. On May 4, 1859 Sam would be a pilot on the Alfred T. Lacey. By May of 1861 Sam's career as a pilot would end.

Following the end of his career as a Mississippi River Boat pilot, Sam Clemens headed for Carson City in the Nevada Territory, with his elder brother, Orion. He expected to "go about of an afternoon when his work was done, and pick up two or three pailfuls of shining slugs, and nuggets of gold and silver on the hillside. And by and by he would become very rich, and return home by sea, ...". He was sorely disappointed and soon became a newspaper reporter.

Having discovered the futility of trying to make a fortune mining for silver and gold, Sam took a job as a reporter for the Territorial Enterprise and became Mark Twain. He remained in Nevada until May of 1864 then departed for San Francisco. In December of 1864 he headed for the hills, Jackass Hill, and learned about Jumping Frogs. Returning to San Francisco in February of 1865, he decided that working as a daily reporter was too tedious but did find an assignment to write letters from the Sandwich Islands. This would ultimately lead to his becoming a lecturer and his next career.

From October to December of 1866, Mark Twain toured Northern California and Nevada, around Carson City, lecturing on his adventures in Hawaii. He then returned to San Francisco, sailed south, crossed the Peninsula, continued north and lectured through New York and the Mid West from January to May of 1867.

Upon arriving in New York in January of 1867, Twain heard of the planned Quaker City pleasure excursion to Europe and the Holy Land. He was already contracted with the Daily Alta California newspaper, as a traveling correspondent and convinced the paper to finance his joining the excursion. The letters Twain wrote on this journey led to his book, "The Innocents Abroad". He visited the Azores, Morocco, France and Italy, where he avoided quarantine at Naples. He broke quarantine in Greece. He visited the Ottoman Empire, Russia and took a 2-week horse ride through "The Holy Land". On the way home the ship stopped in Egypt, Spain and the Bermudas. Although not included in his book, Sam again broke quarantine in Spain.

A busy time for Sam/Mark Twain: He wanted to turn his travel letters into a book. This required a return to California, and a second crossing of the Peninsula, to convince the Daily Alta California to allow his use of the letters they had published of his Quaker City journey. He, again, lectured in California and Nevada, crossed the Peninsula a third time and returned to New York. Sam wished to be considered respectable, something more than a "Western Humorist". This he gained, along with a marriage into a wealthy family. While working on publishing his new book, he again toured throughout New York and the Mid-West on his American Vandals Abroad tour.

Sam Clemens believed he had found respectability, fame, wealth and success. He married into wealth and a woman he would love the rest of his life. His father-in-law had purchased a mansion for him and part ownership in a newspaper. But he chafed at the daily grind. There had been only one job in his life he truly enjoyed, being a river boat pilot. Also, a number of problems and tragedies struck. Olivia became pregnant, but was devastated when her father was diagnosed with stomach cancer and died on Aug. 6, 1870: Emma Nye, a dear friend of Olivia’s who was visiting, was stricken with typhoid fever and died in their home Sept. 29: Finally, their son, Langdon, was born prematurely Nov. 7, frail and sickly, and Olivia fell ill with typhoid herself.

Sam, Livy and Langdon moved to the Langdon home in Elmira and Sam would walk to the Quarry Farm house, "a mile & a half up a mountain, where I write every day" on his book "Roughing It". In October of 1871, they moved to the Hooker House in Nook Farm, on the western side of Hartford, Connecticut. This was a period of a somewhat unsatisfactory lecture tour, three trips to England, the birth of his first daughter, known as Susie, and the building of his Hartford Home on Farmington.

The Clemens family moved into their home in Hartford, CT September 19 of 1874. It served as their official residence until Sam took his family to Europe in March of 1878, not to return until October 24, 1879. During this first period of residency, Sam did not sit still but made several trips, primarily to New York City and Boston. The family took summer vacations away from Hartford: 1875, Newport, Rhode Island; 1876 & 1877 at Quarry Farm. In May of 1877, Sam and Joe Twichell visited Bermuda, Sam's second visit to the island.

Sam wrote to his mother that the distractions of life in America were too interruptive of his writing, so he decided to relocate to Europe "until I shall have completed one of the half dozen books that lie begun, up stairs.". Part of this period was spent in the company of Joe Twichell, in the guise of Mr. Harris in the book "A Tramp Abroad". Sam and his family spent most of this time in Germany and Switzerland but also visited France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and England before returning to Hartford, Connecticut.

The Clemens family had their longest period of residency at their Hartford Home on Farmington Avenue, from September of 1879 to June of 1891. They spent their summers in Elmira with Mark Twain writing in his octagon at Quarry Farm. The summer of 1890 found them in the Catskills and by June of 1891 Sam had decided the family needed to economize, so they moved to Europe.

Sam Clemens and his family wandered about Europe from June of 1891 to May of 1895, seeking cures for their aches and pains; schooling for their children; and some relaxation. Sam was in rather dire financial straits but it was during this period that he became acquainted with Henry Huddleston Rogers, who along with his secretary, put Sam back on the road to financial stability. This effort required Sam take several trips across the Atlantic while his family remain in Europe.

Part of H. H. Rogers' strategy for returning Mark Twain to wealth was to have him pay-off all his debts by taking a lecture tour around the world. The tour would also result in his book "Following the Equator". The book does not include that portion of the tour across the northern tier of North America. Sam, Livy and daughter Clara, accompanied by Major Pond, who managed this portion of the tour, and his wife, started from Cleveland; crossed the Great Lakes; through the Prairies; over the Rocky Mountain and the Cascades to the Pacific Northwest. From there the family crossed the Pacific Ocean to Australia, visited New Zealand and went on to India and South Africa. Ending the tour in England, they discovered that Susie, the eldest daughter who'd stayed in Hartford, had died from Spinal Meningitis, effectively sending the family into a self-imposed exile of mourning. But Sam's debts had been effectively paid off, thanks in large part to the efforts of Henry Huttleston Rogers.

Following the death of their eldest daughter, Suzie, the family went into a self-imposed exile in Europe for the next four years. Much of this time was spent chasing about Europe and England, seeking cures for their ailments and treatments for Jean's epilepsy. The following Day By Day entries for August to December of 1896 are found in Volume II, from January of 1897 to October of 1900 are from Volume III.

With the idea that Jean would receive better treatment for her epilepsy, the family returned to the United States. Twain had stated in the New York Herald, October 15, 1900, that he had departed the U. S. as a "red-hot imperialist" but had returned home an "anti-imperialist". Much of the family's time was spent finding a comfortable place for Livy, who's health was always fragile, and seeking treatment for Jean. They resided, for the most part, in New York City but also spent time at Saranac lake, Riverdale-on-the-Hudson, and at Quarry Farm. They finally took Livy to Florence, Italy where she died in June of 1904. The family would return to New York July 12, 1904.

Livy had died in Florence, Italy. Her funeral was held in Elmira, New York July 14 of 1904. Sam would take residence in Tyringham, Massachusetts for four months before moving into an apartment at 21 Fifth Avenue, New York, where he would keep residence until June of 1908, when his final home, known as Stormfield, was built in Redding, Connecticut. Following the death of his youngest daughter, Jean, on December 24th of 1909, Sam likely found the solitary life in this house unbearable and took his final trip to Bermuda, January 7th of 1910. He stayed there until April 12. When he came to leave the Islands, he was too weak to be dressed. Wrapped in his coat and a few rugs, Clemens was carried in a canvas chair to the SS Corona, then taken by the tender to the RMS Oceana. He died April 21st of a heart attack on April 21, 1910, in Stormfield, one day after Halley's comet's closest approach to Earth