Discovering a famous family member such as Ossip Gabrilowitsch (Mark Twain's son-in-law) is a real treat for a genealogist. One, it makes the (often tedious) research more intriguing. Secondly, a famous person creates significantly more public records.

This page offers a brief biography of Ossip Gabrilowitsch. To read an analysis of Ossip's potential relationship to Pheitl and Zisel Gabrilowitz, and their descendants, click here: Analysis of Ossip Connection

The following biography is excerpted from Wikipedia:

Ossip Gabrilowitsch was born in 1878 in Saint Petersburg. He studied the piano and composition at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, with Anton Rubinstein, Anatoly Lyadov, Alexander Glazunov and Nikolai Medtner among others.

After graduating in 1894, he spent two years studying piano with Teodor Leszetycki in Vienna.

On October 6, 1909, Ossip married Mark Twain's daughter Clara Clemens, a singer who appeared with him in recital.

On August 18, 1910, their only child, Nina, was born in Connecticut at Mark Twain's home Stormfield.

From 1910 to 1914, he was conductor of the Munich Konzertverein. There was a pogrom in Munich in 1917, and as a result Gabrilowitsch was put in jail.

Through the intervention of the papal nuncio to Bavaria, Archbishop Eugenio Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII), Gabrilowitsch was freed from jail, and then he headed to Zurich and America.

He settled in the U.S., and in 1918 was appointed the founding director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, while maintaining his life as a concert pianist.

Before accepting the conductor's position, he demanded a new auditorium be built, and this was the impetus for the building of Orchestra Hall.

Ossip died in Detroit in 1936 and, along with Clara and her father, is buried in the Langdon plot of the Woodlawn Cemetery in Elmira, New York.

Nina, the last known lineal descendent of Mark Twain, died January 19, 1966 in a Los Angeles hotel. She had been a heavy drinker, and bottles of pills and alcohol were found in her room.

Source: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossip_Gabrilowitsch

To read more about Ossip Gabrilowitsch's prominent St. Petersburg family, click here:
St. Petersburg Gabrilovichs