John Marshall Clemens (August 11, 1798 – March 24, 1847) was the father of author Mark Twain.
He was a Virginian slave owner from a long line of land owners in that state. The Clemenses were a Cornish American family originally from Looe in Cornwall, United Kingdom.[1] He was born in Campbell County, Virginia, the eldest of five children, to Samuel B. and Pamela Goggin Clemens, and was named after the Chief Justice John Marshall. He became a licensed attorney at the age of twenty one. He married Jane Lampton in 1823 and moved to Fentress County, Tennessee where he became a county commissioner, circuit clerk and acted as the state's attorney general. He speculated unsuccessfully in land and opened four stores which were also unsuccessful. He then moved to Missouri where he opened more unsuccessful stores, served as a steamboat and railroad commissioner and became a county judge. He served in the Missouri militia but did not serve in the debacle of the Honey War. He was the father of five sons and two daughters. One of his sons, Samuel, became famous as the author Mark Twain.[2]
The cabin in which the Clemens family is believed to have lived in Fentress County, Tennessee is displayed as part of the collection of the Museum of Appalachia in Norris, Tennessee.[3]