The Clemens Girls

Tumblr is down, so I guess I finally found time to colour b&w pictures.

Here is the Clemens girls, the daughters of Samuel Clemens. Samuel Clemens was the real name of Mark Twain. I've always found the Clemens family very fascinating, even more because they once lived in Elmira, NY (the town my mom grew up in and some of my family still live there) and Buffalo, NY.

Their story was very tragic. Only Clara lived a full life, dying at the old age of 88. There was also another Clemens child born. Mark Twain's eldest child and only son, Langdon, died as an infant in 1872.

Susy was the eldest daughter of the three. In August 1896, while visiting her former home in Hartford, Clemens developed a fever that turned into spinal meningitis. She developed delirium and eventually she lost her sight and lapsed into a coma. She died at age twenty-four; her family was very devastated and she was buried in Elmira.

Clara was the second of three daughters. Clara had a serious accident as a child, while riding a toboggan she ended up being hurled into a great oak tree. This resulted in a severe leg injury that almost led to amputation. On August 19, 1910, her only child, Nina, was born in Connecticut at Stormfield. She was the last of the immedimate family to die. She died at age eighty-eight in San Diego, California.

Jean was the youngest and last daughter. The girls' frail mother, Olivia Langdon Clemens, died from heart failure in 1904, and Jean followed just five years later on Christmas Eve 1909. She drowned in a bathtub following a heart attack thought to be related to her epilepsy, at her father's home in Stormfield. Mark Twain was devastated by Jean's death. Because he was born during a visit by Halley's Comet in 1835, he predicted that he will go out with it as well. The prediction turned to be correct as Mark Twain died on 21 April 1910, the day after the comet's return.