Mark Twain was born as Samuel Langhorne Clemens on November 30, 1835 in Florida, Missouri (Lewis Leary, page 122). When Samuel was four years old, his family moved to Hannibal, Missouri, a larger town with a population of almost five hundred on the banks of the Mississippi River (Lewis Leary page 123). Samuel Clemens grew through boyhood much as Tom Sawyer did in this small town on the banks of the Mississippi (Lewis Leary page 123).
             During his boyhood years, Samuel must have watched as any boy might. He saw men maimed, killed in waterfront brawls and negros chained like animals for transportation (Lewis Leary page 123). Most of these things that Clemens saw as a young boy, he used later on in life in his books, like "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn". These books are based on when Clemens was a young boy and most of the characters were people from Hannibal.
             He was educated only in the small village school at Hannibal. Missouri. When Samuel was eleven years old his dad died of pneumonia. He stopped going to school and started working as a typesetter for the Hannibal Courier. to help support his family. A typesetter is a person who sets metal letters called type. This was how newspapers were made (http://www.myhero.com/). Clemens stated in his personal biography that he had been taken from school immediately upon his father's death, but recent research has shown that he continued to attend schol part time for at least two more years (Readings on Mark Twain, pg 20).
             After the discovery of gold in California in 1848, the editor of the Hannibal Journal got caught up in the gold fever. Around 1850, he sold the newspaper to Samual's brother, Orion Clemens. Samuel was apprenticed as a printer at the age of thirteen. Once when Orion was out of town, Samuel was in charge. He got people to tell him all the town gossip and he printed it in the paper. Everyone liked it except for t...