Annie Webster

Annie Moffett was the daughter William A. Moffett and Pamela Clemens whose brother Samuel Langhorne Clemens was the famous author known by his pen name Mark Twain. During Samuel's years as a Mississippi River apprentice and pilot (1857–61), he lodged at the Moffett house in St. Louis, where young Annie was his special favorite. Prospecting in Nevada in 1862, he named a silver mine claim after her (the “Annie Moffett” ledge); having turned to journalism, he quoted from her letters to him in the 1866 sketch “An Open Letter to the American People.” After the death of William Moffett in 1865 the family lived with Pamela and Samuel's mother, Jane Lampton Clemens, in St. Louis, and later in Fredonia, New York. In 1875 Annie married Charles L. Webster, soon to be the manager of Samuel’s publishing company. Their children were Alice, William, and Samuel. Annie retailed her memories of him in chapter five of Mark Twain, Businessman by her son Samuel Charles Webster (1946).