Gregg, I don't mean to state that there was a connection between the sender
and Sam, though the recipient had a great Clemens connection -- he was T.L.
Anderson,  a volunteer prosecutor at the Thompson, Work and Burr trial that
launched John Marshall Clemens's political career here in Hannibal (such as
it was.  Anderson did much better playing the slavery card. He ended up in
the state legislature, then in congress.)  Sender was A.K. Frost of
Nelsonville, Marion County, Missouri.
    However, in four years of serious digging it is the first evidence I
have stumbled across of interest in the Amazon and environs among the great
unwashed of the southwest.  If I have learned anything it is to keep my head
down and to keep turning over rocks.  This is an interesting one.  Never
know what you are going to find around here amongst the whitewashed
detritus.  This sort of thing is important because it is so hard to discern
the truth in Sam's early life.  I'm afraid that much that has been written
about his life prior to 1861 needs to be rewritten.

Terrell