Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorn Clemens November 30, 1835 in Florida, Missouri, the sixth of seven children. At age four the family moved to Hannibal, Missouri on the banks of the Mississippi River. When Sam was eleven his father died. Shortly thereafter, he left school having completed the fifth grade to work as a printerรs apprentice for a local newspaper. In 1859 he worked as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River until the American Civil War. He became a reporter for the Territorial Enterprise in Nevada and seeking a pen name used a riverboat phrase รtwainร or two fathoms (12 feet). He traveled extensively and married Olivia Langdon in 1870 and they settled in Hartford, Connecticut. Much of Twainรs best work was written in the 1870รs and 1880รs in Hartford or at Quarry Farm near Elmira, New York. Mark Twain died in 1891.Some of his novels include: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurรs Court, Life on the Mississippi, The Prince and the Pauper. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer reflects many of his own boyhood experiences.