Mark Twain three of his siblings survived childhood: Orion (1825–1897), Henry (1838–1858), and Pamela (1827–1904). His sister Margaret (1830–1839) died when Twain was three, and his brother Benjamin (1832–1842) died three years later. His brother Pleasant Hannibal (1828) died at three weeks of age. When he was four, Twain's family moved to Hannibal, Missouri, a port town on the Mississippi River that inspired the fictional town of St. Petersburg in "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and the "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn". Slavery was legal in Missouri at the time, and it became a theme in these writings. His father was an attorney
Mark Twain in Nevada 30, 1864 they wrote "Among the few immortal names of the departed—that is, those who departed yesterday morning per California stage—we notice that of Mark Twain. We don't wonder. Mark Twain's beard is full of dirt, and his face is black before the people of Washoe. Giving way to the idiosyncratic eccentricities of an erratic mind, Mark has indulged in the game infernal—in short, 'played hell.' …The indignation aroused by his enormities has been too crushing to be borne by any living man, though sheathed with the brass and triple cheek of Mark Twain." Twain would only be able to