Reverend Joseph Hopkins Twichell was a writer and Congregational minister from Hartford, Connecticut. He was a close friend of writer Mark Twain for over forty years and is believed to be the model for the character "Harris" 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, where he served for almost 50 years. Reverend Twichell performed Twain's wedding and christened his children. He counseled the author on literary as well as personal matters for the rest of his life. A scholar and devout Christian, Twichell was described as "a man with an exuberant sense of humor, and a profound understanding of the frailties of mankind."
In 1861 when the American Civil War broke out, Twichell was still attending Union Theological Seminary, and was not yet ordained. Strongly pro-abolition, he enlisted in the Union Army 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, and many of them were immigrants. In a letter to his father, he remarked:
"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."
After the Civil War, he completed seminary studies and graduated in 1865 from the Andover Seminary in Andover, Massachusetts. He became pastor at the Asylum Hill Congregational Church in Hartford, Connecticut at the recommendation of Horace Bushnell. Twichell met author Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, in October 1868 and they formed a deep friendship. In 1870, Twitchell, along with Rev. Thomas K. Beecher, married Clemens to Olivia Langdon at Asylum Hill Congregational Church. In 1871, Twichell became a supporter of the Chinese Educational Mission which was supervised by Yung Wing. In 1874, Twichell accompanied Yung Wing to Peru to investigate the living conditions of Chinese citizens working there. Twichell encouraged Clemens to write about his piloting career on the Mississippi River, as he had told the minister many stories from that time. Clemens and Twichell undertook a walking trip of over 100 miles to Boston in 1874. It was aborted on the second day when they decided to take the train. They followed the news reports of the adultery scandal involving Henry Ward Beecher, who was a brother of their mutual friend, Rev. Thomas K. Beecher, and their sister, author Harriet Beecher Stowe, who had written Uncle Tom's Cabin. Of the scandal, Clemens wrote Twichell, "Mr. Tilton never has been entitled to any sympathy since the day he heard the news & did not go straight & kill Beecher & then humbly seek forgiveness for displaying so much vivacity." He and Twichell attended the trial of Henry Ward Beecher together. Twichell and Twain traveled together to Bermuda in 1877 and to Germany and Switzerland in 1878. The six week trip through the Black Forest and Swiss Alps in Europe became the basis for Twain's book, A Tramp Abroad.
Twichell married Julia Harmony Cushman in November 1865 and together they had nine children. Their son Burton Parker Twichell married Katherine Eugenia Pratt, daughter of Charles Millard Pratt. Their daughter Harmony Twichell married the composer Charles Ives in 1908. Twichell died on December 20, 1918 and was interred at Cedar Hill Cemetery.
