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