The man who would eventually take the name Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens on November 30, 1835 in Florida, Missouri, the sixth child of John Marshall Clemens and Jane Lampton Clemens. When he was four, his family moved 35 miles east to Hannibal, Missouri, then a port city on the Mississippi River with steam boats arriving from St. Louis and New Orleans. Because the boy suffered from poor health, he was kept indoors and not allowed to play outside. He seemed to have recovered by the time he was nine years old, however, and he then began to join other children outside. He attended a private school in Hannibal. When Samuel was twelve, his father died, and the boy left school to become a printer's apprentice. Two years later he joined his brother Orion's newspaper as a printer and editorial assistant, and he was then exposed to many of the humor writings of his time and probably developed his characteristic style as a result. His first known publication was a one paragraph article called "A Gallant Fireman" published in 1851 when he was fifteen ("ClassicNotes: About Mark Twain").
Samuel started out on a newspaper career but was sidetracked for a time. After his sister married, he took a train to New York City and then Philadelphia, working in the publishing and journalism fields. He then relocated to Cincinnati, intending to save enough money to explore the Amazon by way of New Orleans. He intended to travel by steamboat. It was while he was considering this future that he discovered his own deep connection to the Mississippi river. He decided he had to learn how to pilot steamboats, so he worked for a time on the river and did become a pilot (Lewis, "Mark Twain Biography").
Clemens attained his license to be a river pilot in 1858, and it was from his experiences as a pilot that he drew his pseudonym, Mark Twain, a name derived from a river term meaning two fathoms, or twelve feet, the depth of water at...