"There is not that attention paid to schools there is in many places," Amanda Trulock wrote to her mother from Jefferson County, Ark., at the beginning of September 1845.
"Every one that is any body," she added, "as soon as their children are old enough send them off. [A] Great many have kin in Kentucky and Tennessee, [and] send their children there, and I have been sick all summer and my children have not learnt any thing but mischief."
Amanda's complaints were not part of an overall negative assessment of Arkansas; in the same letter, she remarked that "the people in Arkansaw are the kindest and the most willing to do you a favor of any people that I was ever acquainted with."
Her complaint about the lack of "attention paid to schools" in Arkansas squares with what historians have found not only in antebellum Arkansas, but colonial Arkansas as well. It appears that there was never a formal school at Arkansas Post during its years under French and Spanish rule, though priests and perhaps itinerant schoolmasters offered some instruction in reading.
There were, however, well-educated people at the Post who took an interest in education. Morris S. Arnold has found that Pierre-Joseph Favrot, who served as an officer at the Post for "a few years beginning in 1768" and who later tried hard to get back there, wrote a handbook on education for his sons decades after he left Arkansas.
"Arithmetic, grammar, modern and classical languages, and the arts (drawing, music, and dance) all find a place here," Arnold writes of Favrot's handbook, "as do the physical sciences, geography, and history."
Like Amanda Trulock's "every body that is any body," at least two men who resided at Arkansas Post sent their children off for education. François Ménard sent his illegitimate daughter Constance to the Ursuline Convent School in New Orleans. Joseph Vallière did the same for his daughter Marie Félicité de Vallière de Vaugine.
Amanda Trulock had always known that she might have to send her children to Connecticut to be educated; she herself attended the Misses Ward's Select School for Young Ladies in Bridgeport. In the fall of 1845, however, Victoria, Van Buren, and Burton Trulock were 6, 5, and 2 years old respectively, too young to be sent away, even to live with their aunt and grandparents in Bridgeport.
In the summer of 1846, Ann Kirkwood approached the Trulocks about establishing a small boarding school on their plantation. Kirkwood, 36 and a member of the "Babtist Church," was a native of Massachusetts and had been in Arkansas for two years, long enough to become acclimated--that is, she had been exposed to the diseases endemic to the Southern climate. Malaria was the main concern, and Kirkwood had apparently gotten over it, for Amanda wrote that "she haves the chill and fever now occasionally but not so as to stop school."
In exchange for $400 per year and board, for 46 weeks Kirkwood would teach the Trulock children, as well as eight boarding students.
The boarders were to pay $100 each. "The little Girls are all very good," Amanda wrote, "they are from 8 to 13 years of age. I should not be willing to take young Ladies at all, they would ward so much more attention."
"We have five only daughters," Amanda later wrote to her sister, "quite a select number, all from the best families in the neighbourhood." Most of the girls went home on Saturdays--something of a mystery given that two of them, the Caldwells, lived 30 miles away, quite a journey on rough, muddy Arkansas roads.
Amanda noted that the addition of the boarders increased her "white family" to 14. Another mystery is how 14 people fit into the Trulocks' main house, which Amanda once described as a two-penned cabin. She reported that four girls slept in Miss Kirkwood's room, which was also where Miss Kirkwood conducted the school. The other four shared a room with James Hines Trulock's unmarried sister Elizabeth.
The school commenced in October 1846. At first, only Victoria and Van Buren attended; Burton, Amanda wrote, "has taken up with the little Blacks during school." Miss Kirkwood opined that Burton was "naturly smarter than Van Buren," and she only became more enthusiastic over time.
The boarding school was a success. By February 1848, Amanda could write that Mr. Trulock had engaged Miss Kirkwood to teach as long as she remained in Arkansas, though she had some interest in trying to get a position teaching somewhere along the Mississippi, possibly a sugar plantation.
The best evidence of Kirkwood's skill as a teacher may be in the beautiful letters that Victoria Trulock, age 9, began writing to her grandmother in Bridgeport in April 1848; in exquisite penmanship, Victoria wrote of Amanda's new baby that "Little Marshall I think will be quite a pet among us little girls, for when he is a few weeks older, it will add very much to our happiness to have the privilege of holding and playing with him."
Along with endearments to the grandparents she had not yet met, Victoria wrote, "Father has promised me that I shall come after Miss Kirkwood has left Arkansas and attend school in Bridgeport."
Kirkwood remained with the Trulocks after James Hines died in December 1849. By March 1850, Victoria could report to her grandmother: "My studies are Geography, History, Definer, Grammar, Arithmetic, and Natural Philosophy. I like to cipher very much, and have got as far in my Arithmetic as compound subtraction."
When Kirkwood finally left the Trulocks in the summer of 1850, Amanda was sorry to see her go. They remained in touch throughout the 1850s, as Amanda sent her children to Connecticut to finish their formal schooling. Kirkwood lived with various other families in Arkansas--it's not always clear from Amanda's letters whether she was on a visit or a teaching assignment--and visited Amanda at least once, over Christmas in 1855.
Kirkwood went back east to visit a few times and often stayed with her sister and brother-in-law (Emily and George Brodie) in Little Rock. The farthest afield I have found her is in Van Buren in 1880; the census lists her as a boarder, so perhaps by age 70 she was no longer teaching.
She died Jan. 1, 1885, at the age of 75, at the residence of Mrs. L. J. Eaton of Jefferson County, and is buried with Emily and George Brodie in Oakland Fraternal Cemetery in Little Rock.