Joseph Twichell
| Joseph Hopkins Twichell | |
|---|---|
| Born |
November 30, 1838 Southington, Connecticut, United States |
| Died | December 20, 1918 (aged 80) Hartford, Connecticut, United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Pastor |
| Title | Reverend |
Reverend Joseph Hopkins Twichell (November 30, 1838 – December 20, 1918), writer and pastor, was Mark Twain's closest friend for over forty years, and appears in A Tramp Abroad as "Harris." Twain and Twichell met at a church social after the Civil War when Twichell was pastor of Asylum Hill Congregational Church in Hartford, his only pastorate for almost 50 years. Reverend Twichell performed Twain's wedding and christened his children, and counseled him on literary as well as personal matters for the rest of Twain's life. A scholar and devout, Twichell was described as "a man with an exuberant sense of humor, and a profound understanding of the frailties of mankind."
Twichell was born in Southington, Connecticut, to Edward Twichell and Selina Delight Carter.
He studied at Yale from 1855–1859. He was an athletic young man with deep-sunk eyes and a powerful jaw. He had rowed port waist on the Yale crew the first time the Yale defeated Harvard.
From 1859–61, Twichell attended Union Theological Seminary, New York.
In 1861, Twichell was living on Waverly Place in New York City, attending Union Theological Seminary, but not yet ordained, when war broke out. Strongly pro-abolition, he enlisted in the Union Army (in the wrong state and with inadequate credentials) a few weeks after the Confederacy fired upon Fort Sumter in April.
Twichell became chaplain of the 71st New York State Volunteers, one of five regiments of the Excelsior Brigade commanded by General Daniel E. Sickles. The regiment was largely made up of working-class Irish Catholics from lower Manhattan, an unusual flock for a Congregationalist from Connecticut. He wrote his father: “If you ask why I fixed upon this regiment, composed as it is of rough, wicked men, I answer, that was the very reason. I should not expect a revival, but I should expect to make some good impressions by treating with kindness a class of men who are little used to it.”
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