Park Church Lectures Conclude with an Examination of Two Sisters: Olivia Clemens and Susan Crane

Posted on by Center for Mark Twain Studies

The 2024 Park Church Summer Lecture Series, organized by the Center for Mark Twain Studies (CMTS), concludes with its final 2024 lecture at 7:00 p.m., Wednesday, July 31 at The Park Church. The lectures are free and open to the public and recordings of the lectures will be posted to the CMTS website.

Susan Crane on the Quarry Farm Porch

Barbara Snedecor will present “‘the dearest little woman in the world’: Letters of Olivia Clemens to her Sister, Susan Crane.”

While Susan Crane’s relationship with her famous brother-in-law, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, is known, exploring the bond between Olivia and her older sister creates a new perspective. Drawing from Olivia’s letters to Susan, we experience her emotions as a parent of four children, enjoy descriptions of summers at Quarry Farm and of family travels, and view glimpses of her intimate thoughts. Selected excerpts illuminate the warm relationship between the two sisters, both members of Elmira’s Park Church, and reveal Olivia’s feelings at ordinary and defining moments in the Clemens family biography.

Barbara E. Snedecor served as director of the Center for Mark Twain Studies and as Assistant Professor of American Literature at Elmira College. In addition to editing the second edition of Mark Twain in Elmira, she has contributed pieces to the Mark Twain Annual and American Literary Realism. She is the editor of Gravity: Selected Letters of Olivia Langdon Clemens (University of Missouri Press, 2023).

The Park Church Summer Lectures are open to the public and begin at 7:00 p.m. in The Park Church. The Series will continue on Wednesdays throughout July with recordings of each posted to the CMTS website.

About The Trouble Begins Lecture Series

In 1984, the Elmira College Center for Mark Twain Studies initiated a lecture series, The Trouble Begins at Eight lecture series. The title came from the handbill advertising Mark Twain’s October 2, 1866 lecture presented at Maguire’s Academy of Music in San Francisco. The first lectures were presented in 1985. By invitation, Mark Twain scholars present lectures in the fall and spring of each year, in the Barn at Quarry Farm or at Peterson Chapel in Cowles Hall on Elmira College’s campus. All lectures are free and open to the public.

In 2016, CMTS expanded the series and in partnership with the Park Church, created the Park Church Summer Lectures Series.  Founded in 1846 by a group of abolitionists, The Park Church has been a strong presence in Elmira’s history and some of its congregation were close friends and family members to Mark Twain. Known for its striking architectural features, The Park Church contained Elmira’s first public library and has a long history of charitable service to the Elmira community.