Clemens’ signature found in Mark Twain Cave
A pair of Mark Twain enthusiasts who have searched for more than two decades say they’ve found what appears to be Samuel Clemens’ signature from his youth scrawled on the wall of the Missouri cave he made famous in “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.”
In the mid-1800s, long before he took on the pen name Mark Twain, Clemens and his young pals romped around the cave near the Mississippi River on the outskirts of Hannibal.
As a group of Twain scholars toured what is now known as the Mark Twain Cave this summer, cave owner Linda Coleberd, self-proclaimed “Twainiac” Cindy Lovell and two others broke off in search of the long-elusive signature, which was long believed to be among the thousands of names signed on the cave’s limestone walls.
As Coleberd waved the group’s lone flashlight around an otherwise dark area of the cave, Lovell says she happened to catch the beam of light as it shined on a signature: “Clemens,” written in pencil.
It wasn’t until weeks later that a high-resolution photo of the signature revealed “Sam” etched at the same place, indicating the signature was that of the famed author and not a relative.
The signature was discovered in July, but details weren’t announced until recently, only after several Twain experts were able to study the signature and determine it was almost certainly real.
The cave itself became a tourist destination after the 1876 publication of “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” as people flocked to the place that inspired some of the book’s key adventures.
It wasn’t until 1979, after the cave was named a National Historic Landmark, that writing on the walls was prohibited.