Mark Twain House

Samuel Clemens — Mark Twain — built this 25-room High Victorian Gothic mansion in 1874 and lived there with his family for 17 years, writing The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court at his desk here. In 1896, while Twain and his wife Livy were traveling in England, their daughter Susy fell ill with spinal meningitis and died in the house at age 24 before her mother could reach her. The family never lived in the house again; Twain later wrote simply, "Susy died in the house we built in Hartford." Staff and visitors have long reported a young woman in a white dress moving through the halls, believed by many to be Susy, along with running footsteps and children's laughter on the upper floors, and the smell of cigar smoke tied to the family's former butler, George Griffin.