Before he adopted the pen name Mark Twain, Samuel Clemens grew up in Hannibal, Missouri—the template for Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Fin’s hometown. Today, the quiet town perched by the Mississippi is filled with callouts to Mark Twain and his famous creations. You can tour his home and learn about his complex relationship with the morals of his environment and the values he adopted later in life. In every quote, we are treated to the wit and wisdom of one of America’s greatest storytellers.
“Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.”
– Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi
Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum
Some small town museums are more of a tourist-trap than vault of information. Such is not the case with the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum. One rarely sees such a beautifully curated and nuanced museum in a small town. Admission includes the homes of Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), Tom Blankenship (Huckleberry Finn), Laura Hawkins (Tom’s love interest: Becky Thatcher), the law offices of Twain’s father, as well as two museum structures—one about Clemens and the other dedicated to his literary work.
Not only does the museum paint a picture of Hannibal in the days of Twain but also how it shaped some of his common literary writing themes. Twain repeatedly expressed a conflict between the justifications for slavery preached in the pulpit every Sunday of his childhood and his growing “immoral” conviction in basic human dignity. This became the crux of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn when Finn decides he would rather burn in Hell than turn over his friend Jim, a runaway slave.
We lived in a slaveholding community; indeed, when slavery perished my mother had been in daily touch with it for sixty years. Yet, kind-hearted and compassionate as she was, I think she was not conscious that slavery was a bald, grotesque, and unwarranted usurpation. She has never heard it assailed in any pulpit, but had heard it defended and sanctified in a thousand.
– Mark Twain, Autobiography
Recently, some one in Missouri has sent me a picture of the house I was born in. Heretofore I have always stated that it was a palace, but I shall be more guarded now.
– Mark Twain, Autobiography
Mark Twain Around Hannibal
Hannibal has had a hard time of it ever since I can recollect. First, it had me for a citizen, but I was too young then to really hurt the place.
– Mark Twain, Autobiography
Almost every store front in Hannibal has some callout to Samuel Clemens or one of his creations. There is no end of t-shirts, bumper stickers, shot glasses, and keychains to buy. But that isn’t to say that we didn’t find anything of interest. We enjoyed taking a break from the heat at the Mark Twain Brewing Co. and found some intriguing oddities simply lying in the street.
Tom Sawyer’s Cave
There is even a cave, inspiration for the penultimate setting of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer where Tom is lost, the villain is undone, and a fortune is discovered. Unfortunately, we were running short on time… Oh well, I guess we’ll have to swing by some other time.
