Amanda (Beardsley) Trulock (1811 - 1891)

Born 22 Apr 1811 in Connecticut, United States

Ancestors

Descendants

Died 20 Apr 1891 at age 79 in Connecticut, United States [uncertain]

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Amanda (Beardsley) Trulock is a descendant of the immigrants William Beardsley and Mary Harvie.

Biography

Amanda was born in 1811. She is the daughter of Nichols Beardsley and Mary Burton. She passed away in 1891.

She married James Hines Trulock about 1820. They had the following children:

Victoria Beardsley Trulock 1839–1869

Joseph Burton Trulock 1842–1907

Nichols Beardsley Trulock 1843–1908

Mary Eugenia Trulock 1844–1845

Marshall Sutton Trulock 1848 - 1912

James Hines Trulock, Jr. 1849-1907

From Trulock Family Letters Collection, Introduction, University of Central Arkansas Archives:

The Trulocks lived on a Jefferson County plantation called Prairie Place, and owned several slaves. The later generations of the Trulocks were very influential in Pine Bluff. James Burton Trulock, son of James and Amanda, was a county treasurer in 1882. Walter Nichols Trulock, grandson of James and Amanda and son of Van Buren Nichols Beardsley Trulock, ran a prestigious hotel in Pine Bluff.

James Hines Trulock was born September 22, 1799 in Darlington District, South Carolina. He was the first son and second child of Sutton and Mary Hines Trulock. James married Amanda Beardsley, on October 4, 1837. Amanda was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut on April 22, 1811. Amanda and James lived in Georgia after their marriage, and their children Victoria Beardsley Trulock, Van Buren Nichols Beardsley Trulock and Joseph Burton Trulock were born, respectively, in 1839, 1840, and 1842. In 1844, James and Amanda moved to Arkansas where they settled near Pine Bluff, Jefferson County. It was in Pine Bluff that two other sons were born: Marshall Sutton in 1848 and James Hines in 1849. It was also there that James Hines, Sr. died on December 18, 1849. Amanda continued to reside on Prairie Place until 1866 when she moved back to Bridgeport, leaving her children behind. It was also in 1866 that Victoria married Guernsey W. Davis. Victoria died in 1869. Van Buren married Marianna Phelps Lewis. Marshall married Juliet Hamnet, and James married Clara Libby. Amanda Trulock died in 1891.

Excerpt from Ties That I Have to Bind Me Here:

On Thursday, January 30, 1845, at about two o'clock in the afternoon, Amanda Beardsley Trulock landed near Pine Bluff, in Jefferson County, Arkansas. The next morning at ten, she laid to rest her infant daughter, Mary Eugenia, who had died on New Year's Day aboard a steamboat on the Mississippi River. The cause of death was an inflammation of the bowels, and the corpse had been preserved in whiskey. The journey from the banks of the Chattahoochee River to the banks of the Arkansas River had also sickened but did not kill the rest of the Trulock household, which consisted of Amanda and her husband, James Hines Trulock, his sister Elizabeth Trulock, the children Victoria, Van Buren Nichols, and Burton Trulock, and forty slaves, including Tim, Ann, Israel, Silas, Jim, George, Ephraim, May, Vina, Jinny, Elbert, Jane, Reuben, Eliza, Caroline, Hemy, and Orrin.

Over the next five years, the Trulock household endured what Amanda called "a thorough ordeal of climatising" to the malarial Arkansas Delta.

In December 1849, Amanda was left a widow, the mistress of fifty slaves, and the administrator of a large, indebted estate. Amanda's famly in Bridgeport, Connecticut urged her to sell the slaves and plantation and return home with her five young children. Amanda refused: "It would be impossible for me to write you, so that you could have any idea of my have the same feeling I have or the same ties that I have to bind me here."

Slave Owner

From Pine Bluff planter was conflicted on slavery, U.S. Civil War:

Amanda Beardsley Trulock is remembered for being an unconventional Arkansas woman of her time. She held nuanced conflicted views about slavery, politics and the Civil War that took place during her time.

Trulock was born on April 22, 1811, in Bridgeport, Conn., to Nicholas and Polly Beardsley. She married James Trulock, a slave-owning cotton planter in 1837, and moved to his Georgia plantation. In 1845, they migrated to a plantation homestead along the Arkansas River that was just 8 miles east of Pine Bluff.

At the plantation they dubbed Prairie Place, Trulock oversaw the domestic affairs, including running a boarding school in service of the daughters of fellow local plantation owners. Only five of her seven children had survived the huge adjustment to the Arkansas climate.

In 1849, Trulock's husband suddenly died, leaving behind a mountain of debt and a 555-acre plantation with more than 50 slaves to run. Although she was advised by her family in Connecticut to sell all of her assets and return to Bridgeport, Trulock chose to remain in Arkansas instead.

She and Reuben Blackwell, one of her slaves whom she endowed with the authority to help run the plantation, were able to pay off all of her husband's debts and make the plantation more profitable.

Trulock is remembered as an unconventional Arkansas woman of her time for three main reasons.

One was the nuanced and often conflicted perspective with which she viewed her slaves. According to her letters to her family, though she initially refused to leave Arkansas partly because of the responsibility to her slaves, whom she termed "our black family," she was not averse to owning them.

She endowed Blackwell with the authority to co-manage the plantation and his efficiency incited the envy of the white planters in the region. Blackwell's efficiency came at a cost to the slaves he oversaw, most likely resulting in longer, harder working hours and conditions. Blackwell was probably not just envied by white plantation owners but was most likely envied and disliked by his fellow slaves for his role as their overseer and unyielding taskmaster.

Trulock refused all opportunities to increase her slave holdings through purchase because she may have found the practice of slave trading deplorable, but the number of slaves she owned did increase as her slaves of child-bearing age had children. She and her husband came to Arkansas with 40 slaves and though she purchased no new slaves, by the time she left Arkansas almost 30 years later, she was in the possession of 62 slaves.

Uniquely, Trulock maintained an avid correspondence with her family in Connecticut during a time when the nation was polarized between the pro-slavery South and the anti-slavery North. Throughout the 1850s, Trulock spent summers in Bridgeport with her family and alternately left each of her children there to attend school. This was a highly unusual undertaking since the 2,800-mile round trip journey to Arkansas took approximately 40-60 days.

Lastly, Trulock showed a great ambivalence in supporting either the North or South during the Civil War. For more than two years, she and her eldest son lost contact with all of her other children and family in Connecticut. Instead of having her son conscripted to the Confederate Army, Trulock purchased him an exemption, and he supervised their slaves until the arrival of the Union Army in 1863. In 1864, she also ensured that her second son was not conscripted by either side by discouraging his return to Arkansas. Upon his eventual return though, he was immediately compelled into joining the Confederate Army, though his older brother escaped conscription as he had returned to the North.

Trulock stayed in Arkansas with her slaves until the end of the Civil War, but she resented the freedom that the Emancipation Proclamation brought Blackwell and the other slaves. In 1866, her sons took over the plantation and she returned to her family in Connecticut. She died in Bridgeport on April 20, 1891, never having returned to Arkansas.

James died in 1849.

In 1850, the Slave Schedule for Jefferson County, Arkansas lists Amanda as the owner of 49 enslaved people. See 1850 U.S. Federal Census - Slave Schedules.

In the 1860 Census she has moved back to Connecticut. The 1860 Slave Schedule for Richland, Jefferson County, Arkansas lists M.Trulock as the owner of 62 enslaved people. See [1]

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Sources

See also:

• Ties That I Have to Bind Me Here, Amanda Beardsley Trulock in the Arkansas Delta, 1845-1866, by Brooke Greenberg, The Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. LXXVI, No. 1, Spring 2018. (Available through JSTOR.)
• Pine Bluff planter was conflicted on slavery, U.S. Civil War by Ninfa O. Barnard for Explore Pine Bluff.com, 18 Apr 2022; Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc
• M90-09 – TRULOCK FAMILY LETTERS COLLECTION, University of Central Arkansas Archives
• Amanda Trulock, cotton planter, by Tom Dillard, Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette, 21 Oct 2018.
• 1850 US Census: Richland Township, Jefferson County, AR, 2 Nov 1850. Line 21, Amanda Trulock, 37, head of household. - Original data: Seventh Census of the United States, 1850; (National Archives Microfilm Publication M432, 1009 rolls); Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29; National Archives, Washington, D.C.; Roll: 27; Page: 82b. Also FamilySearch Record|M67Z-GFW, Image|S3HT-67K9-K8
• 1850 U.S. Federal Census - Slave Schedules : Richland, Jefferson County, AR, 1 Nov 1850. Amanda Trulock, Slave Owner, Number of Enslaved People: 49. - Original data: Seventh Census of the United States, 1850. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1850. M432, 1,009 rolls; Records of the Bureau of the Census; Record Group Number: 29
• 1870 US Census: Fairfield, Fairfield County, CT, 11 Jul 1870, Pg. 116. Line 10, Amanda Trulock, 59, in household of Nichols Beardsley. - Original data: Ninth Census of the United States, NARA microfilm publication M593, 1,761 rolls. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.; Roll: M593_97; Page: 504B
• Find A Grave: Memorial #158231054; Amanda Beardsley Trulock, Mountain Grove Cemetery and Mausoleum, Bridgeport CT, Plot: Sec 4