In which town in Missouri was Mark Twain born?

Mark Twain was born in Florida, Missouri. He entered the world as Samuel Langhorne Clemens on November 30, 1835, in the small Monroe County village then known simply as Florida.

His family left Florida when he was about four years old and moved to Hannibal, Missouri, a Mississippi River port. Hannibal became the place most closely associated with his childhood and later inspired the fictional town of St. Petersburg in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Florida is an easy place to confuse with Hannibal because Hannibal shaped Twain's literary imagination and is now a major Mark Twain heritage site. However, Hannibal was his boyhood home, not his birthplace. The original Clemens house site in Florida is commemorated by the Mark Twain Birthplace State Historic Site.

Twain later used memories from both Missouri communities in his writing. His birth in the tiny village helped make the contrast between his obscure origins and his later international fame especially striking.