Isaiah Sellers was the riverboat captain from whom Samuel L. Clemens claimed to have appropriated the pen-name Mark Twain

Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...

. The story of how Clemens started to use the name is told in chapter 50 of Life on the Mississippi

Life on the Mississippi

Life on the Mississippi is a memoir by Mark Twain, of his days as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River before the American Civil War, and also a travel book, recounting his trip along the Mississippi many years after the War....

and is summarized in the main article on Mark Twain

Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...

. Since there are a few problems with the chronology of Sellers' death and Clemens' first use of the name, the story is not accepted uncritically by Twain scholars. Captain Isaiah Sellers is buried at Bellafontaine cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...

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