Biography | Mark Twain — Buried at Two Fathoms in Elmira

People treat Stormfield in Redding as the last pin, because that is where he died.

The coffin stopped here.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens died at 6:22 p.m. on 21 April 1910 at Stormfield, his house in Redding, Connecticut.

Halley's Comet was back in the sky.

He was seventy-four.

A funeral was held on 23 April at the Brick Presbyterian Church on Fifth Avenue in New York.

The next day, 24 April, he was buried here in the Langdon family plot at Woodlawn Cemetery, Elmira.

Olivia Langdon Clemens, his wife, was already in the ground.

So were their children Langdon, Susy, and Jean.

Clara, the surviving daughter, would be buried here later, as would her husband Ossip Gabrilowitsch and their daughter Nina.

The plot had belonged to Olivia's father, Jervis Langdon.

Elmira was her town.

Quarry Farm, on East Hill above the city, was the summer desk where much of Huckleberry Finn was written.

In 1937 Clara raised a monument twelve feet high, two fathoms, the depth the leadsman called mark twain.

A small stone marks his grave.

Woodlawn was chartered in 1858 and still takes burials.

It is an active cemetery.

Stay on the paths.

Do not photograph other mourners.

Do not leave tokens that the grounds crew will have to remove.

The Davis Street gate is the historic entrance.

The Langdon plot sits on a slope under trees.

Photo: Kenneth C. Zirkel, 17 May 2019, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons