Samuel L. Clemens - Mark Twain
(Nov 30, 1835 - Apr 21, 1910)
Member, Polar Star Lodge No. 79, St Louis, Missouri
Initiated : May 22, 1861
Passed : June 12, 1861
Raised : July 10, 1861

Samuel Clemens - Mark Twain (Nov. 30, 1835 - April 21, 1910)
Well known and famous Missourian often quoted author, lecturer and one time editor for the Virginia City Enterprise, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known for his quotations he also wrote such classics as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn which has since been called the Great American Novel; the Adventures of Tom Sawyer, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, The Prince and the Pauper, and The Innocents Abroad. During his lifetime, Twain became a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists and European royalty.

Best remembered as a humorist, he also served as vice-president of the Anti-Imperialist League and president of the Children's Theatre for immigrants in New York. After a trip to the Middle East in 1867 he presented his lodge with a gavel made from Lebanese Cedar.

As the Civil War tore into America, and Missouri Brethren donned either blue or gray, Brother Clemens joined many men who moved west for that and other reasons. It had been reported that he was Junior Deacon at Beat Mountain Lodge No. 76 at Angels Camp, a California mining camp in February 1865. Three years earlier he had visited Carson Lodge, then under jurisdiction of the Grand Lodge of California.

He returned to St. Louis in 1868 after his renowned trip abroad, which served as the basis of his book “Innocents Abroad.” He brought with him a gift still the prized possession off his lodge. It is a gavel. The words inscribed on the metal band scrolled round the handle reads:
“This mallet is of Cedar cut in the Forest of Lebanon whence Solomon obtained the Timbers for the Temple. The handle was cut by Brother Clemens himself from a cedar planted just outside the walls of Jerusalem where Bro. Godfrey DeBoullion, the first Christian conqueror of that City 19th of July, 1099. The gavel in its present form was made at Alexandria, Egypt by order of Bro. Clemens.”

On the faceplate are the words:
From Bro. Sam’l L. Clemens, (Mark Twain) to J. J. Pottenger, M.D., March 25, 1868. Presented to Polar Star Lodge No. 79 by J. H. Pottenger to W.M., April 8th, 1868.