His birth, he was later to brag, increased the population of his hometown by one whole percent, an accomplishment that few in the world could claim.
Prosperity was as elusive in Florida, Missouri, for the Clemens family as it had been on the eastern seaboard, and in 1839 the family moved to the more prosperous town of Hannibal, on the banks of the Mississippi, where young Sam was to store up the memories that have become an integral part of the American imagination. Although larger and more settled than Florida, Hannibal nevertheless had the flavor of a frontier town. Gamblers and confidence men practiced their trades on the steamboats that stopped there; slave traders with their "wares" in tow held auctions in the center of town; and frontiersmen passed through on their way to Saint Joseph, Missouri, the beginning of the Overland Trail. Violence was common; death was frequent; and authority was unpredictable. Comedy, sentimentality, and individualism were various antidotes to the stark reality of Sam Clemens's world.
John Marshall Clemens died in March 1847, when his son was eleven, and the following year the boy began working for the Hannibal Gazette, then for the Missouri Courier, and finally for his brother Orion on the Hannibal Western Union in 1851 and the Hannibal Journal later that year.
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