Inaugural Mark Twain Storytelling Festival Celebrates Adair County’s Literary, Historical Roots

June 22, 2026 2

Area residents had the rare opportunity to hear from a Revolutionary War hero, a medical pioneer and one of the greatest American authors on Saturday, June 20, at the inaugural Mark Twain Storytelling Festival.

Held at Lindsey Wilson University, the event featured seven speakers who celebrated the art of storytelling, local history and Mark Twain’s ancestral ties to Columbia.

Twain was born in 1835 in Missouri as Samuel Langhorne Clemens, but his mother, Jane Lampton Clemens, was born on June 18, 1803, in Columbia. She married John Marshall Clemens in May 1823 in Columbia. The couple moved to Tennessee before settling in Missouri in 1835.

The Mark Twain Storytelling Festival was the brainchild of students in Lindsey Wilson theatre professor Robert Brock’s arts administration class, who presented their idea for an annual cultural event for Columbia-Adair County to Columbia Mayor Pamela Hoots.