Born in Connecticut, Joseph H. Twichell was the son of a tanner. He graduated from Yale in 1859, but his studies at Union Seminary were interrupted by Civil War service as chaplain of the 71st New York Volunteers. In 1865 he completed his divinity studies at Andover Seminary and accepted the pastorate of Asylum Hill Congregational Church (Hartford, Connecticut), where he would remain for the rest of his life. The same year, he married Julia Harmony Cushman (1843–1910); they had nine children. He struck up a friendship with Clemens in 1868, which deepened when the Clemenses moved to the Hartford neighborhood of Nook Farm, where the Twichells also lived. Twichell preached a “muscular Christianity” more concerned with social progress than with doctrine, and was broad-minded enough to be Clemens’s confidant and advisor. He accompanied Clemens to Bermuda in 1877 and to Europe in 1878; in A Tramp Abroad (1880), he is the model for the character of Harris. He was one of the closest friends Clemens ever had.