Amanda Trulock’s early letters from Arkansas (1845-1849) carry a distressed tone. There was the matter of her husband’s debt, and his ambitions for expansion and change that were never quite satisfied. Then there was the matter of poor health, as the Trulocks’ “white family” and the people they enslaved endured “a thorough ordeal of climatising”—getting used to bouts of malaria while trying to avoid other diseases.

Amanda’s parents and brother were eager for her to return to Bridgeport permanently, but she insisted on remaining in Arkansas. Perhaps the most threadbare of her attempts to reassure her family in Bridgeport: “Mr. T kills us sometimes as many as eight or ten Squirrels a day and that is fine eating I can assure you.” (May 20, 1845.)

In an undated letter to Amanda’s brother Bronson, James Hines Trulock wrote, “I have been out on a Bearhunt and was at the killing one of the largest sized … ones, have some over 100 [?] of oil in him weigh between 4 & 500 lbs. Our party killed two........

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