It Happened in Hartford: 150 years of the Mark Twain House is a multi-layered exhibition experience that includes:

• A physical exhibition in the visitor center of the Mark Twain House & Museum highlighting over 100 objects from our collection relating to the House’s history and Clemens family’s personal and professional lives in Hartford.

• A history trail with twelve stops throughout the streets of Hartford and Bushnell Park.

• This digital exhibition which serves as a companion to the physical exhibition so you can dive deeper into the history and themes explored in our museum and throughout Hartford.

As a whole the exhibition tells the story of Samuel Clemens (better known as the creator of Mark Twain), and his wife Olivia and three daughters during the 17 years they lived in Hartford, fresh on the success of his first book Innocents Abroad, and as Samuel built his career as writer and performer “Mark Twain” and wrote the works that he is most known for–The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

The years after the American Civil War (1861-1865) saw the dawn of the information age, as industrial publishing and wide-spread secular performances began to revolutionize how people produced and consumed news, images, ideas, and history. Clemens saw the possibility of making a living capitalizing on this revolution, by writing books that captured America and the world in flux, dealt with the important issues of the day, and were marketed for everyone to read.

And Clemens didn’t just write books; he created the character of Mark Twain, a voice meant to represent a distinctly American point of view telling stories about Americans living in a rapidly changing world. In so doing, Clemens helped establish the information economy, celebrity culture, and the hustle that was (and is) life as a professional creative.

Making a living as a creative–a writer and a performer–was fairly new in the late 19th century, and most who did so had family money to rely on as they spent their days in creative pursuits. Samuel Clemens did not have this luxury, not coming from wealth himself. Instead, Clemens became an innovator in building the business that was Mark Twain, while juggling side hustles and evolving his brand identity, in pursuit of economic stability.

The Clemenses would spend 17 years in Hartford. Near the end of his life, looking back to the time before the death of his beloved wife and two of his three daughters Samuel Clemens expressed great sorrow and loss for the time he and his family lived in Hartford. But, that sentiment cannot do justice to the great highs and lows, both personally and professionally that the family experienced in this house. In Hartford they found community in Nook Farm, strength in their family unit, and, for Samuel, success in building the brand of “Mark Twain,” all giving the family a stability they would seek to recreate for the rest of their lives. Ultimately, however, financial hardship and family loss caused the family to leave Hartford, not return, and sell their home here.

It Happened In Hartford: 150 Years of the Mark Twain House is proudly sponsored by The Hartford and supported by the Bushnell Conservancy and the City of Hartford Forestry Department.

The exhibition was curated by Jodi C. DeBruyne and Jessica Neuwirth and made possible thanks to help from Emily Esten, Hillel O’Leary, Valerie Haggerty-Silva, Mallory Howard, Steve Courtney, Erin Bartram, Ella Walsh, Emma Gerstein, and Chris Mooney.