To say that I have been living, eating, sleeping, breathing Mark Twain for the past four weeks of college would be a huge understatement. As a sophomore at Elmira College who reigns from the Greater Hartford area of Connecticut, I simply cannot avoid Mark Twain. (Side note: Mark Twain lived in Hartford, CT the majority of the year and spent his summers in Elmira, NY.) I jokingly say that I am “a Mark Twain stalker” to the visitors but I swear I did not choose Elmira College because of the Mark Twain-Elmira/Hartford connection. I just love purple. As a Mark Twain Ambassador I have spent a good amount of time sitting in the Mark Twain Study and Mark Twain Exhibit and learning through visitors about their love for this famous writer and humorist. I’ve met people who come from Washington (like the state, not D.C.), Australia, Alabama and many other places all over the country and world. One woman from Australia said that her great grandfather cut Mark Twain’s hair!
At some point in your experience at Elmira College you are probably going to ask yourself, “What is the deal with this Mark Twain guy? Why does Elmira College obsess over Twain so much? Why do we read so many of his novels in Freshman Writing?” At first his connection may seem totally random but after a closer look at Mark Twain’s (aka: Samuel Clemens) life the answer makes sense. Here are a few factoids about the Elmira College/Mark Twain connection:
• Samuel Clemens wife, Olivia Langdon lived in Elmira, NY for a majority of her life. Her family owned property-known as the Langdon mansion- over on the corner of Church Street and Main Street (where Subway and Elmira Business Institute are now located).
• Samuel Clemens, Olivia and their three girls Susy, Clara, and Jean would spend their summers in Elmira at Olivia’s sister, Susan Crane’s house called Quarry Farms. Quarry Farms was a dairy farm where Susan had about 200 cows and distributed milk.
• Susan built the Study for Mark Twain in hopes that the Clemens family would extend their stay at Quarry Farms during the summer. The Study allowed Mark Twain to have a quiet retreat to write and smoke. Twain averaged about 30 to 40 cigars a day! It’s a miracle Twain never got lung cancer! Some say that Susan built Mark Twain the study so that he would stop smoking in her house.
• Twain’s wife, Olivia was a member of the Elmira College class of 1864. Olivia’s father, Jervis Langdon was one of the first trustees of Elmira College (basically he was a wealthy man who believed in Simeon Benjamin’s dream of starting a college that gave an equal degree to woman and men). You could say that Jervis was one of the reasons that Elmira College began. Maybe we should be singing a Mountain Day song about him!
• The Mark Twain Study was moved from Quarry Farms to Elmira College campus in 1952. No, Mark Twain did not write The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer on EC’s campus overlooking The Puddle. The original location of the study up at Quarry Farms looked over the city of Elmira and the Chemung River, which reminded Twain of his boyhood on the Mississippi River and inspired him to write about Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. Dr. Ida Langdon (Samuel Clemens’ niece) was an English Professor at Elmira College and gave the Mark Twain Study to the college in 1952.
So there you have it! Mark Twain Sparknotes version. If this has not satisfied your appetite for this famous American author visit the Study or the Exhibit on campus!
