The Tragic Final Years Of Mark Twain

April 2024 · 1 minute read

Death was a constant, as was slavery. Two of his siblings died in childhood. A slave was killed by his owner as Sam watched. His father died when Sam was 12, and the boy entered the workforce, learning the printing trade. Eventually he became a steamboat pilot, a childhood dream, and used that position to get his brother, Henry, a job on one of the craft. A boiler explosion on the steamboat fatally injured Henry — he took a week to die, and Sam was with him at the end, blaming himself for the death of his beloved brother.

He married Olivia Langdon, 10 years his junior, reports PBS, and by all accounts loved and adored her the rest of their life together — she was the "most perfect gem of womankind," he wrote. Together they would have four children. Their son died, still a toddler, of diphtheria; a daughter died, age 24, of spinal meningitis; a second daughter, after being diagnosed with severe epilepsy, died of a heart attack at 29. And after 34 years of marriage, he had the sorrow of burying his beloved wife, Livy, in 1904.

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