Nick Trammell: The Making of an Old Southwest Legend

Like many family histories, Samuels' story blended facts, legend, and myth, but it remains significant for what it reveals about Nicholas Trammell's reputation in the black community.6 In 1886, the same year that Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde appeared, Chicago's popular literary weekly, The Ledger, gratified its readers with a series of sentimental reminiscences of the editor's Arkansas upbringing, including a sketch of Nick Trammell. [...]Nicholas Trammell's image as a cunning highwayman must have raised worries among white audiences about the dangers of being swindled, robbed, or murdered on the road.