Mt. Olivet Cemetery

Mt. Olivet Cemetery HANNIBAL, MISSOURI Virtual Tour by Jordyn Pair, age 11 “I wish I’d said Mister Robinson’s murder. Clemens, Orion, the eldest son Williams. But I never meant The Mt. Olivet Ceme- in the family, and Henry, the any harm. Everybody calls him tery just outside of town holds youngest, are all buried in the Hoss.” family members of Hannibal’s Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Mis- “A body can’t be too most famous resident, Mark souri. Orion’s wife, Mary, is partic’lar about how they talk Twain. This family is the Clem- also buried there. ‘bout these-yer dead people, ens family. Samuel Clemens, Although Orion is the Tom.” more widely known as Mark oldest, and Henry the young- These are some of Twain, has four family mem- est, Sam lived the longest out the graveyard-scene lines bers buried in the Mt. Olivet of all three, living to the age of found in Mark Twain’s classic Cemetery - his father, John M. 74. However, neither Samuel book, The Adventures of Tom Clemens, his mother, Jane L. Clemens, nor his wife, Olivia, is Sawyer. Even though there were probably no murders in the Mt. Olivet Cemetery or the old Baptist Cemetery, there are still many interesting sto- ries about these graveyards. “Sacred to the memory Many believe that the old Bap- of” So-and-So had been tist Cemetery just outside of painted on them once... town provided the setting for the murder scene in Tom Saw- yer. Grave robbing was a com- mon occurrence in the mid- 1800s since medical schools did not always have bodies available for research pur- poses. Mark Twain used this knowledge when creating the The grave of Henry Clemens, Sam’s younger brother, is in Mt. Olivet Cemetery. famous fictional scene of Doc To read about Henry’s death, visit the Museum Gallery Virtual Tour. Page 2 Mt. Olivet Cemetery in real life, Joe Douglass was a kind and respected man with an African-American and “A faint wind Osage Indian heritage. Next to him, his wife, Anna S. moaned through Douglass, rests in peace. the trees, and There are many interesting graves in the Mt. Tom feared it Olivet Cemetery, but these might be the are a few that may be of in- spirits of terest to visitors passing through town who are inter- the dead, ested in Mark Twain’s ties to complaining at Hannibal. being disturbed.” ~J.P. “The boys moved off and disappeared in the gloom. At the end of half an hour they were wading through the tall grass of the graveyard.” buried in a Hannibal ceme- been spotted in the grave- tery. Both are buried in El- yard. mira, New York with their Including the Clem- daughters and Olivia’s family ens family, there are also two members. Although grave- other graves that may inter- yards can be spooky, the Mt. est visitors. One of these is Olivet Cemetery is not at all. the grave of Joe Douglass, The graves are in no particu- the man who Mark Twain lar order, although families used as a model for “Injun are usually buried together. Joe.” The fictional Joe is a The graveyard is very open murderer, grave robber, and “It was a graveyard of the old-fashioned Western kind. It was on a hill, about a mile and a half from with lots of trees and long all-around criminal in the the village. It had a crazy board fence around it, grasses. Wildlife has also book Tom Sawyer. However, which leaned inward in places, and outward the rest of the time, but stood upright nowhere.” Page 3 The character of “Injun Joe” was based on Joe Douglass, who was half-Osage Indian and half-African American. He is remembered as a kind man. “Then they waited in silence for what seemed a long time. The hooting of a distant owl was all the sound that troubled the dead stillness.” This virtual tour of the Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Hannibal, Missouri was written by Jordyn Pair from Milford, Michigan as a project for the 2nd Annual Mark Twain Young Authors Workshop. .

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