This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is our American stories, and the next story is about a writer, well, whose name you know,

but whose story you may not.

This is the story of a time before the world knew Samuel Clemens by his pen name, Mark Twain.

The time he spent in the American West helped Clemens develop a distinctive Western voice and provided him with material that would make him America's first celebrity author.

Here to tell the story of Samuel Clemens' life in the Old West is Roger McGrath.

McGrath is the author of Gunfighters, Highlymen, and Vigilantes, Violence on the Frontier,

a U.S. Marine and former history professor at UCLA, Dr. McGrath has appeared on numerous History Channel

documentaries, and he's a regular contributor for us here at our American Stories.

Here's McGrath.

Most people know Sam Clemens is Mark Twain, the author of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

They have no idea that as a young man, he spent the

1860s in the mining camps of Nevada and California. And it was in those camps he wrote

professionally for the first time. It was also in those camps that he learned from older writers,

a style of writing common to the frontier west, and adopted

that style for his own. A book came out of his experiences on the frontier, which is little known,

but may be his best work, roughing it. Sam Clemens is born in Florida, Missouri in November 1835.

He is the sixth of seven children, three of whom die in childhood.

His parents are of Scotch, Irish, Cornish, and the English descent.

The family moves to Hannibal, Missouri, a port on the Mississippi when Sam is four.

There's regular river traffic in and out of the port, and there are pioneers passing through the town on their way west.

From young age, Clemens understands there is a larger world outside of Hannibal.

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