Samuel L. Clemens Born November 30, 1835

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I was born the 30th of November, 1835, in the almost invisible village of Florida, Monroe county, Missouri. I suppose Florida had less than three hundred inhabitants. It had two streets, each a couple of hundred yards long; the rest of the avenues mere lanes, with rail fences and corn fields on either side. Both the streets and the lanes were paved with the same material—tough black mud, in wet times, deep dust in dry.

Return to the US

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From Hill, 1973:

The Clemens family booked passage on the Prince Oscar and left the Villa di Quarto on June 20, stopping for four days at the Hôtel de Ville in Florence. ...

The family boarded the ship June 28, ...

Then, as the Prince Oscar was preparing to leave, Clemens discovered that the death certificate and consular papers were missing.... the Hamburg-American Steamship Company had forwarded these documents to New York by an earlier ship, ...

Taking Livy to Florence

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From Hill, 1973:

On October 5, after a final visit to Susy's grave, the Clemens family moved from Elmira to New York City, where it spent the last weeks before departing at the Grosvenor Hotel....  And on the evening of the twenty-third the family boarded the Princess Irene in high hopes of Olivia's recovery and their continued financial tranquility.

Quarry Farm - 1903

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From Hill, 1973:

"...Mrs. Clemens was doing so well that she and her husband decided to make a trip to Elmira in July, leaving Clara and Jean in Riverdale.  Clemens told the Huttons: 

We carried Mrs. Clemens down the hill at 8:30 in the morning, at Riverdale; lifted her into the launch and all on board Mr. Rovers's yacht, out in the river; steamed down to the DL&W dock at Hoboken, carried the madam aboard the 10 A.M. train and came through to Elmira in the suffocating heat, arriving at 4:40...

Back to Riverdale

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From Hill, 1973:

"When he came to move Olivia from York Harbor to Riverdale on October 15, Clemens fretted about the method of transportation:  asking for the Kanawha, then canceling the yacht and deciding on a train, arranging for a special car and special engines."

 

Riverdale-on-the-Hudson

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From Hill, 1973

"...the Clemens family loved the house at Riverdale (later known as "Wave Hill" and occupied by Arturo Toscanini and Sir Gladwyn Jebb, British ambassador to the United Nations). It was an enormous fieldstone, three-story mansion with impressive wooded grounds, just inside the New York City limits."

 

Saranac Lake

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In June of 1901 the Clemens family - except for Clara, ... - moved into a rustic cottage at the edge of Lake Saranac, New York.  They christened the house "The Lair."

Sam was at the lake save for much of August when he took a cruise with H. H. Roger on board the Kanawha.

From W. B. Northrup's book "With Pen and Camera":

Return to New York - 1900

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The Clemens family returned to the United States believing that Jean could receive proper treatment in New York City.  They sailed on the Minnehaha.

From the New York Herald, October 15, 1900:

I left these shores, at Vancouver, a red-hot imperialist. I wanted the American eagle to go screaming into the Pacific. It seemed tiresome and tame for it to content itself with the Rockies. Why not spread its wings over the Phillippines, I asked myself? And I thought it would be a real good thing to do