Ancestors

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Biography

Clara (Clemens) Gabrilowitsch is Notable.

Vocalist, Author. Born the second daughter of Samuel Clemens, famed as author Mark Twain, and his wife Olivia Langdon, in Elmira, New York. She was largely educated by private tutors, but also attended a public high school in Hartford, Connecticut; and a boarding school in Berlin, Germany. In 1896 the family moved to Vienna, where she studied piano. Eventually she gave up the piano and focused on a career as a vocalist. In Austria, she met Ossip Gabrilowitsch, a Russian pianist with whom she had a long distance friendship for many years, finally marrying in October 1909, only two months before the death of her sister, Jean, leaving her their father's only surviving child and heir. Clara and Ossip performed in both Europe and in the US before settling in Detroit. In 1926, she played the title role in a dramatization of her father's 'Joan of Arc,' but was a critical failure. Her husband died in 1936, and she traveled before settling in California. In 1944, at the age of 70, she married 50 year old Jacques Samossoud, who proceeded to loot her inheritance in order to finance his gambling. In 1951, in order to pay her husband's debts, she auctioned off her Hollywood home, and many of the papers and memorabilia she had from her father. They relocated to La Jolla, where she was diagnosed with a heart ailment which left her bedridden for the last few years of her life. She died at Sharp Memorial Hospital at age 88. She authored three books: "My Father: Mark Twain" in 1931; "My Husband: Gabrilowitsch" in 1938; and "Awake to a Perfect Day: My Experience with Christian Science" in 1956.

Clara donated practically the entire library of her father, composed of nearly 2,500 volumes of books, to the Mark Twain Free Library after his death in 1910.

She and Ossip had one daughter (only grandchild of Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain), born a few months after his death in 1910.

Sources

Find A Grave: Memorial #6093118 Clara Langdon Samossoud

Wikipedia: Clara Clemens

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