The Mark Twain House & Museum

Hartford

The Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford, Connecticut, was the home of Samuel Langhorne Clemens and his family from 1874 to 1891. It was designed by Edward Tuckerman Potter and built in the American High Gothic style. Clemens biographer Justin Kaplan has called it "part steamboat, part medieval fortress and part cuckoo clock." Clemens wrote many of his best-known works while living there, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, Life on the Mississippi, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, A Tramp Abroad, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Poor financial investments prompted the Clemens family to move to Europe in 1891. The Panic of 1893 further threatened their financial stability, and Clemens, his wife Olivia, and their middle daughter, Clara, spent the year 1895-96 traveling so that he could lecture and earn the money to pay off their debts. He recounted the trip in Following the Equator. Their other two daughters, Susy and Jean, had stayed behind during this time, and Susy died at home on August 18, 1896 of spinal meningitis before the family could be reunited. Wikipedia