The Golden Book of
Yoknapatawpha County

Jefferson doctor whose practice was located above a drugstore. In 1919 diagnosed a growth on Bayard (II) Sartoris’s cheek as cancer.

Boyfriend of Candace Compson in early 1910, and probably the father of Quentin Compson (IV). Had a confrontation with Candace’s brother Quentin Compson (III), who threatened to kill him and unsuccessfully fought him.

Wife of Mr Armstid.

Husband of Lula Armstid. Farmer.

Only brother of Caroline Compson and last male descendent of the Bascomb family. A handsome flashing swaggering workless bachelor. Had a temper. May have had an affair with Mrs. Patterson. Lived with his sister, being financially dependent on her family. Borrowed money from almost anyone, even Dilsey Gibson although she was a Negro, explaining to her as he withdrew his hand from his pocket that she was not only in his eyes the same as a member of his sister’s family, she would be considered a born lady anywhere in any eyes. Later moved away but still regularly sent letters with requests for money in the form of ‘business propositions’, addressed to his cousin Jason Compson IV, which his sister usually granted.

Damuddy. Died 1898–1900. Mother of Caroline Compson.

Born c 1907. Son of Mr and Miss Beard. Unknowingly (under dictation, in return for candy and an air rifle), writer of Byron Snopes’s anonymous letters to Narcissa Benbow in 1919.

Father of Virgil Beard. Owner of a hotel and a mill in Jefferson in 1919.

Born 1890–91. Originally from Kentucky. Married Henry Mitchell c 1910, mother with him of Belle Mitchell (II). Separated from Henry Mitchell in 1919 to marry Horace Benbow, with whom she had already been in an affair since 1917, and with whom and with her daughter she moved to Kinston, a place she had chosen for its land (the black, rich, foul, unchaste soil which seemed to engender money out of the very embrace if the air which lay flat upon it). During her first marriage a frequent host of social gatherings, introducing tea as a meal between dinner and supper to Jefferson. Piano player. Preferred shrimp above all other food, which she had Horace pick up from Kinston’s railway station each Friday.

Drove the Benbow carriage until he fled Jefferson with Federate troops in 1863. Returned in 1865 and was appointed Acting Marshal of Jefferson. Was to be confirmed in his post through election that year, but a group of men led by John Sartoris (I) hijacked the process by shooting dead the Burden Brothers, who had brought black men to the voting booth and by relocating the booth to the Sartoris Place, thus ensuring that his election was rejected.

Father of Will Benbow? Came from Barbados to Jefferson in 1871.

Born 1885–6. Son of Will and Julia Benbow, brother of Narcissa Benbow, for whom his feelings were more like those of a lover. Lawyer. Avid reader. Educated at Sewanee (where he was an honour man in his class) and Oxford, England (as a Rhodes Scholar, where he became a good tennis player). In Europe between December 1917 and April 1919 as part of the YMCA. Learned the art of glass blowing in Venice which he continued to practice after returning home. Married Belle Mitchell in early 1920, with whom he had already maintained an affair since 1917, and with whom and whose daughter he moved to Kinston, first into a rented house, then 1922 into a bungalow he built for them. Also briefly in an affair with Belle’s sister Joan Heppleton in December 1919. Mortgaged his Kinston house so that he could keep the family home in Jefferson and his sister would not need to rent it out.

Temporarily left Belle sometime in 1924–25, then stayed with her until he again decided to quit her on 3 May 1929, because he felt the dripping of the package of shrimps (whose smell even after ten years he couldn’t stand) he collected from the station for Belle every Friday summed up his existence. On his way to his sister, forced to spend the evening of 7 May at the Old Frenchman Place, following a chance encounter with Popeye. After Popeye’s murder of Tommy and rape of Temple Drake, and against the express wish of his sister, provided a measure of accomodation for Ruby Goodwin and her infant son and unsuccessfully acted as defence attorney for her common law husband Lee Goodwin, who on 21 June was convicted for Popeye’s crimes and subsequently lynched. Thereafter returned to Kinston and his wife Belle.

Died c 1904. Father of Percy. Executor of Goodhue Coldfield’s estate. After he died in 1864 and left neither will nor estate except the house and the rifled shell of the store, appointed himself, elected himself probably out of some conclave of neighbors who came together to discuss his daughter Rosa Coldfield’s affairs and what to to with her, in particular after she broke off her engagement to Thomas Sutpen in June 1866 and returned to live in her family home, destitute. Since she would not accept the actual money from the sale of the store, provided her with baskets of food and unlimited credit, representing the money’s value (and after a few years, over-value) ,that she would draw upon in a dozen ways, including errants, store credit and a two hundred dollar headstone for Judith Sutpen.

In his office, he had a portfolio, a fat one, with Estate of Goodhue Coldfield. Private written accross it in indelible., which when his son Percy opened it after his death, was filled with racing forms and cancelled betting tickets on horses whose very bones were no man knew where now, which had won and lost races on the Memphis track forty years ago, and a ledger, a careful tabulation in his hand, each entry indicating the date and the horse’s name and his wager and whether he won or lost; and another one showing how for forty years he had put each winnning and an amount equal to each loss, to that mythical account.

In 1870, helped arrange John (I) Sartoris’s buyout of Ben J Redmond in the Jefferson railway under construction at the time.

Died 1899–1901. Wife of Will Benbow, mother of Horace and Narcissa Benbow. An invalid at least towards the end of her life.

Son of Judge Benbow.

Died 1908–11. Husband of Julia Benbow, father of Horace and Narcissa Benbow, son of Francis Benbow? Lawyer. Educated at Sewanee. Died two days after the return of Horace Benbow from Oxford (England).

One of Reba Rivers’s two dogs (the one with the blue ribbon), which she acquired the day after her husband Binford Rivers died in 1927.

Member of Simon Strother’s (baptist) congregation.

Born Kentucky. At Harvard with Quentin Compson (III) in 1910. Somewhat spoiled, liked to brag about and to girls. Present during the car trip near Cambridge on the day Quentin Compson (III) committed suicide.

Overbearing mother of Gerald Bland. From Kentucky. Present during the car trip near Cambridge on the day Quentin Compson (III) committed suicide.

Born November or December 1831, Haiti, died 3 May 1865, Sutpen’s Hundred. Only child of Thomas and Eulalia Sutpen, father of Charles (II) Bon. His father repudiated him and his mother upon finding out at his birth that they had negro blood. Nonetheless named by his father, including his last name, which was not that of his mother.

Moved to New Orleans with his mother. Spent large chunks of his mother’s fortune on his horses and clothes and the champagne and gambling and women. Had more watches and cuff buttons and finer linen and horses and yellow-wheeled buggies (not to mention the gals) than most others did. Married an octoroon woman with whom in 1859 he had a son, Charles (II).

In September of that year, started reading law at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, where he met his half-brother Henry Sutpen, who, unaware of their being related, invited him to Sutpen’s Hundred over Christmas and introduced him to their sister Judith Sutpen. Over the course of the following year, 1860, entered into an undefined and never-spoken second engagement with Judith, engineered by her mother Ellen. Refused to explicitly make a proposal of marriage not because he suspected Judith was his half-sister, but because he was more interested in receiving a sign — any sign — by his father that he recognised him. He again visited Sutpen’s Hundred in June, at which time his father had traveled to New Orleans to confirm his identity. The following Christmas eve, his father revealed his identity to Henry, who at first refused to believe and repudiated his birth-right.

Thereupon he followed Henry to New Orleans, riding through the bright cold of that Christmas day to the River, from where they took the steamboat. There would be Christmas on the boat too: the same holly and mistletoe, the same eggnog and toddy; perhaps, doubtless, a Christmas supper and a ball, but not for them: the two of them in the dark and the cold standing at the guard rail above the dark water and still not talking since there was nothing to say. In New Orleans, explained to Henry that he would only break off the engagement if his father would confront himself.

Hoping that the war would resolve the matter by killing either of them, in the spring of 1861 they returned north, into Mississippi and secretely enrolled as privates in the University Grays Company of the 11th Mississippi Infantry, hiding until they could join the company after its departure in June. Received a lieutenancy before the company entered its first engagement even. In April 1862, either he or Henry was shot through the shoulder during the battle of Shiloh at Pittsburg Landing, carried to safety by the other on his shoulders, and recovered in a private house in Corinth.

During those four years, suspended his decision and did not contact Judith. Then finally, in March 1865, while retreating through Carolina, crossed paths with Thomas Sutpen and believed to see recognition in his gaze, and wrote a letter to Judith. Initially met acquiescence with Henry, then renewed refusal after Henry was told by his father that he was of mixed race descent. Henry still refused to stop him with force, until finally on 3 May 1865, Henry shot him dead at the gates of Sutpen’s Hundred upon their return from the war.

After his body was brought into the house, Judith took from his pocket the metal case she had given him with her picture in it, which he may have swapped for the picture of his octoroon wife to convey I was no good; do not grieve for me. Second person to be buried in the graveyard of Sutpen’s Hundred. Judith Sutpen bought a headstone for his grave in 1870 with the proceeds of the sale of their father’s store after his death.

Wanted his father to recognise him, for him to say You are my oldest son. Protect your sister; never see either of us again.

Born 1859, New Orleans, died 1884, Sutpen’s Hundred. Only child of Charles Bon and Mrs Bon.

In December 1871, upon the disappearance of his mother, was brought to Sutpen’s Hundred by his half-aunt Clytemnestra Sutpen. In 1879 was indicted by Jim Hamblett for badly injuring a man at a negro ball held in a cabin a few miles from Sutpen’s Hundred. The case was quashed by Jason Lycurgus Compson (II), who paid his fine and gave him money to move away to be whatever he wanted among strangers. Married a full-blood negress, name unknown, 1879. Spent the following year on his back recovering from the last mauling he had received, in frowsy stinking rooms broken by other periods, intervals, of furious and incomprehensible and apparently reasonless moving apparently hunting out situations in order to flaunt and fling the ape-like body of his charcoal companion in the faces of all and any who would retaliate giving the first blow, usually unarmed and heedless of the numbers opposed to him.

In 1880 returned to Sutpen’s Hundred, so severely beaten and mauled that he could not even hold himself on the spavined and saddleless mule on which he rode while his wife walked besides it to keep him from falling off. Rented a parcel of land off of Judith Sutpen and rebuilt a dilapidated slave cabin. Farmed on shares a portion of the Sutpen plantation, farmed it pretty well, with solitary and steady husbandry within his physical limitations, the body and limbs which still looked too light for the task which he had set himself, who lived like a hermit in the cabin, who consorted with neither white nor black and who was not seen in Jefferson but three times during the next four years and then to appear, be reported by the negroes as being either blind or violently drunk in the negro store district on Depot Street, where Jason (II) Lycurgus Compson would come and take him away (or if he were too drunk, had become violent, the town officers). In 1881, their son Jim Bond was born.

Contracted yellow fever around January 1884. Nursed by Judith Sutpen in the main building of Sutpen’s Hundred until she also fell ill. Survived her but died later that year. Fifth person to be buried in the graveyard of Sutpen’s Hundred. His headstone had already been arranged for by Judith when he was brought from New Orleans by Clytemnestra, and during the twelve years after his death, Clytemnestra scrimped and saved the money to pay off the remaining debt to Jason (II) Lycurgus Compson.

Born 1882, Sutpen’s Hundred. Son of Charles (II) Etienne de Saint Valery Bon. Mentally handicapped? Inherited what he was from his mother and only what he could never have been from his father. Disappeared from Sutpen’s Hundred, 1910. Whereabouts unknown.

Octoroon from New Orleans whose name is not recorded. Wife of Charles (I) Bon and mother of Charles (II) Etienne Saint-Valery Bon. Was left destitute after the Bon family lawyer fled with the remaining wealth in 1861 or early 1862. Disappeared in 1871 through death or elopement or marriage, leaving behind her son.

Vicious member of the band of bandits known as Grumby’s independents. When Grumby panicked and killed Rosa Millard in December 1864, he failed to convince him to also kill Bayard Sartoris (I) and Marengo Strother to cover the first mistake. Between mid December 1864 and late February 1865, the group was chased by Sartoris, Strother and Theophilus McCaslin. In late January or early February, Bowden approached them posing as a Tennessee slave owner, looking to reclaim his horses that Grumby’s independents hat supposedly stolen, found out that they were after Ab Snopes and Grumby in particular and shot McCaslin in his right, rheumatic, arm. The next day the group left behind Snopes to try to pacify them, but only McCaslin, suffering from his arm, abandoned the pursuit. Some days later, Grumby killed an old black man and strung him up with a ‘final’ warning note for Sartoris and Strother, with an addendum from Bowden that he had no compunctions in killing children. In late February, Bowden, Bridger and other members of the group betrayed Grumby, handing him over to Sartoris and Strother with a pistol to settle the matter, Bowden in particular blaming Grumby for ruining the ‘good thing’ they had going, by panicking and then succumbing to scruples. He announced that he and the group would go to Texas.

Captain in the Federate cavalry in 1863.

Well known authority on blood and glandular disease in Memphis that Bayard Sartoris (II) (accompanied by and on the insistence of Virginia du Pre and Dr Alford) consulted on 9 July 1919 about a growth on his cheek. Made it come off merely by touching it, without even realising that he and not Virginia du Pre was the patient, and for which he charged fifty dollar.

Died c 7 April 1862. Was to marry Drusilla Hawk, gifted her her horse Bobolink, but fell in the battle of Shiloh.

Born 1922–4. Raised on an Arkansas farm. Present at Red’s funeral, while staying a couple of days with Miss Myrtle.

Born c 1875, died July 1927. First wife of Anse Bundren, mother of Cash, Darl, Jewel, Dewey Dell and Vardaman Bundren. Originally a teacher, married Anse Bundren c 1897. After giving birth to Cash and Darl, started an affair with Mr Whitfield c 1908, out of which Jewel was born. Said by Cora Tull to have been partial to him, whom she laboured so to bear, and whom she coddled and petted so despite him flinging into tantrums or sulking spells, inventing devilment to devil her.

Used to bake very good cakes.

Again according to Cora Tull, she lived, a lonely woman, lonely with her pride, trying to make folks believe different, hiding the fact that they just suffered her.

Upon her death, Anse Bundren delivered on his promise to bury her in Jefferson, according to her wish to lie among her own people, by undertaking a calamitous journey in which her coffin was twice nearly lost to flood and fire and which resulted in severe injuries to Cash and Jewel and the confinement of Darl in Jackson’s mental asylum, and which was used by Anse to procure a set of false teeth and arrange a second marriage to Mrs Bundren.

Born c 1875. Husband of Addie Bundren and Mrs Bundren, father of Cash, Darl, Jewel, Dewey Dell and Vardaman Bundren. A luckless man. The chosen of the Lord, for who He loveth, so doeth He chastiseth. His feet were badly splayed, his toes cramped and bent and warped, with no toenail at all on his little toes, from working so hard in the wet in home-made shoes when he was a boy. He was sick once from working in the sun when he was twenty-two years old. Thereafter told people that if he ever sweat he would die. Married Addie Bundren c 1897. By 1912 had lost all his teeth. Did not visit Jefferson between 1915 and June 1927, when he vowed to deliver on his promise to his deceased wife to bury her with her relatives. The journey was complicated by flooding and resulted in the death of their mules, the sale of Jewel Bundren’s horse to buy replacements, the fracture of Cash Bundren’s leg, its subsequent near-destruction by a cement cast, the destruction by fire of Mr Gillespie’s barn, severe burns to Jewel’s back and the forced admission of Darl Bundren to the Jackson mental asylum to avoid a claim by Mr Gillespie. After burying Addie Bundren, Anse procured a set of false teeth, allowing him to once again eat God’s own victuals as a man should, and arranged a second marriage to Mrs Bundren.

Born c 1900. Eldest child of Anse and Addie Bundren, brother of Darl, Jewel, Dewey Dell and Vardaman Bundren. A good carpenter. Liked sawing the long hot sad yellow days up into planks and nailing them to something. In the summer of 1926, broke his leg falling twenty-eight foot, four and a half inches, about, off of a church roof after slipping on wet planks. Was unable to work for six months and still limping in June 1927, when he worked for days on end to construct a coffin for his dying mother. Broke his leg a second time after his father resolved to bury his mother in Jefferson and their wagon was hit by a log in an attempt to ford the Yoknapatawpha near Tull’s Bridge, which had flooded. Was carried to Whitfield’s, where the horse physician Bill Varner set his leg. In Mottson, his father procured cement and cast his leg with it, nearly resulting in its complete destruction. The cast was removed by Dr Lucius (I) Peabody in Jefferson, taking with it sixty-odd square inches of skin.

Born c 1900. Second child of Anse and Addie Bundren, brother of Cash, Jewel, Dewey Dell and Vardaman Bundren. According to Cora Tull, the only one of his brothers that had his mother’s nature, had any natural affection. As a boy, first learned how much better water tastes when it has set a while in a cedar bucket. Used to lie on the pallet in the hall, waiting until he could hear the others all asleep, so he could get up and go back to the bucket, where before he stirred it awake with the dipper he could see maybe a star or two in the bucket, and maybe in the dipper a star or two before he drank.

Fought in France, from which he brought back a little spy-glass.

Said by folks to have been queer, lazy, pottering about the place.

In July 1927, set fire to the shed at Gillespie’s in a failed attempt to destroy the coffin holding the rotting corpse of his mother, stored there for the night en route to her burial in Jefferson. Sent to the mental asylum in Jackson by his father to avoid a claim by Mr Gillespie.

Born 1910. Second youngest child and only daughter of Anse and Addie Bundren, sister of Cash, Darl, Jewel and Vardaman Bundren. Tomboy. Seduced by Lafe while both were cotton-picking. Became pregnant in May 1927. Given 10 dollar by Lafe and instructed to procure an abortifacient in a drugstore, which she attempted in July 1927 during her family’s inauspicious trek to Jefferson to burry her mother, failing in Mottson where she was refused by Mr Moseley, and failing again in Jefferson where she was taken sexual advantage of by Skeet MacGowan.

Born c 1908. Illegitimate son of Addie Bundren and Mr Whitfield, raised as the third child of Addie and Anse Bundren. Half-brother of Cash, Darl, Dewey Dell and Vardaman Bundren. A head taller than any of the rest of his family. According to Cora Tull, his mother always whipped him and petted him more than his brothers, while he flung into tantrums or sulking spells, inventing devilment to devil his mother, and he grew up to be a Bundren through and through, loving nobody, caring for nothing except how to get something with the least amount of work, always doing something that made him some money or got him talked about.

When he was fifteen, spent all of June to November single-handedly cleaning up forty acres of land for Lon (I) Quick, working at night by lantern and suffering from narcolepsy by day, which led to a dereliction of his domestic duties and aroused suspicion of illness in his mother, lazyness in his father and an affair with a married woman in his elder brothers. Used his earnings to buy a spotted horse off of Lon (I) Quick descendant of Flem Snopes’s Texas ponies.

Inseparable from his horse.

Chose to personally deliver his horse to Mr Snopes, rather than elope with it to Texas, after his father had sold it in exchange for a new team of mules to transport Addie Bundren’s coffin to Jefferson in July 1927. Suffered severe burns to his back to save the coffin when his brother Darl set fire to Mr Gillespie’s barn in an attempt to destroy it.

Second wife of Anse Bundren. A kind of duck-shaped woman , with them kind of hard-looking pop eyes. Lived in a little new house in Jefferson until 1927, when Anse Bundren arrived in town to burry his first wife Addie Bundren, procure a set of false teeth and ask her to marry him instead.

Born c 1915. Youngest child of Anse and Addie Bundren, brother of Cash, Darl, Jewel and Dewey Dell Bundren. His mother was a fish.

Died 1865. From Missouri, tried to bring black people to the voting booth in Jefferson in 1865 to elect Cassius Q Benbow as Marshall, but shot dead by John Sartoris (I).

Knocked Maury Compson out with a fence picket after he had touched his daughter outside the Compson gate.

Born c 1800, Tennessee, died 1864, Jefferson. Brother of Miss Coldfield, husband of Mrs Coldfield, father of Ellen Coldfield Sutpen and Rosa Coldfield.

Married Mrs Coldfield, became father of Ellen in 1817. Moved with his family (including his sister and mother) to Jefferson in 1828, established a small mercantile business. Methodist steward. Neither drank nor hunted nor gambled. Owned neither land nor slaves except two female house servants who came into his possession through a debt and whom he freed as soon as he got them, bought them, putting them on a weekly wage which he held back in full against the discharge of the current market value at which he had assumed them on the debt.

In April 1838, betrothed his daughter Ellen to Thomas Sutpen, apparently moved by his hundred miles of plantation (Sutpen’s Hundred).

In 1845 his wife gave birth to their daughter Rosa and died in labour.

Opposed the civil war as a conscientious objector on religious grounds. Closed his store and kept it closed all during the period that soldiers were being mobilised and drilled, refused to sell any goods for any price not only to the military but, so it was told, to the families not only of soldiers but of men or women who had supported secession and war only in talk, opinion. Refused to permit his sister to come back home to live while her horse-trader husband was in the army. His two house servants were among the first Jefferson negroes to desert and follow the Yankee troops.

Eventually closed his store permanently. Lived with his daughter Rosa in the back of the house, with the front door locked and the front shutters closed and fastened, and where, so the neighbours said, he spent the day behind one of the slightly opened blinds like a picquet on post, armed not with a musket but with the big family bible until a detachment of troops would pass: whereupon he would open the bible and declaim in a harsh loud voice even above the sound of the tramping feet, the passages of the old violent vindictive mysticism which he had already marked as the actual picquet would have ranged his row of cartridges along the window sill. Then one morning in 1861 he learned that his store had been broken into and looted, doubtless by a company of strange troops bivouacked on the edge of town and doubtless abetted, if only vocally, by his own fellow citizens. That night he mounted to the attic with his hammer and his handful of nails and nailed the door behind him and threw the hammer out the window. He was not a coward. He was a man of uncompromising moral strength. He was not a coward, even though his consciousness may have objected not so much to the idea of pouring out human blood and life, but at the idea of waste: of wearing out and eating up and shooting away material in any cause whatever.

Fed by his daughter, who hauled up food at night by means of a well pulley and rope attached to the attic window. Then he died. One morning his hand did not come out to draw up the basket. When his daughter with the help of neighbours broke open the door, they found him with three days’ uneaten food beside his pallet bed.

Left neither will nor estate except the house and the rifled shell of the store. So Judge Benbow appointed himself as executor of his estate, assuming responsibility for his daughter Rosa’s finances.

Sister of Goodhue Coldfield. Came with his family to Jefferson in 1928. Reconciled to his daughter Ellen’s marriage to Thomas Sutpen by that big house and the notion of slaves underfoot day and night. Raised his second daughter Rosa after his wife died in labour, raised her to believe that she was not only delicate but actually precious. One day in early 1860, climbed out of the window and disappeared eloping with a horse- and mule-trader whom she subsequently married. Was refused permission by her brother to come home after her husband had gone off to fight in the Civil War. Last heard of in 1863 while trying to pass the Yankee lines to reach Illinois and so be near the Rock Island prison where her husband, who had offered his talents for horse- and mule-getting to the Confederate cavalry remount corpse and had been caught at it, was now.

Born c 1800–1802, Tennessee, died 1845. Wife of Goodhue Coldfield, mother of Ellen and Rosa Coldfield. Married Goodhue Coldfield, gave birth to Ellen in 1817. The family moved to Jefferson in 1828. Died while giving birth to Rosa in 1845.

Born 1845, Jefferson, died 8 January 1910. Daughter of Goodhue and Mrs Coldfield, sister of Ellen Coldfield Sutpen. Born very late into her parents’ marriage, her mother dying in labour, for which she never forgave her father. Raised by her spinster aunt Miss Coldfield. had never been taught to do anything practical because the aunt had raised her to believe that she was not only delicate but actually precious

After her father’s store was looted, he bolted himself shut in the attic. Now her life consisted of keeping it in herself and her father. She was cooking the food which as time passed became harder and harder to come by and poorer and poorer in quality, and hauling it up to her father at night by means of a well pully and rope attached to the attic window. She did this for three years, feeding in secret and at night and with food which in quantity was scarcely sufficient for one.

Moved to Sutpen’s Hundred in June 1865, following the death of her sister and her father, for food and shelter and to fulfil her sister’s dying wish that she should look after her (four years elder) niece Judith Sutpen. Became engaged to Thomas Sutpen in April 1866 but broke off the engagement and moved back to her family home in Jefferson in June, after he proposed they conceive a child and only marry if it were a boy. Wore only black thereafter, and nothing under the sun, certainly no man nor committee of men, would ever persuade her to go back to her niece and brother-in-law.

Now Judge Benbow and a group of fellow citizens and neighbors left baskets of food on her doorstep at night, the dishes (the plates containing the food, the napkins which covered it) from which she never washed but returned soiled to the empty basket and set the basket back on the same step where she had found it as if to carry completely out the illusion that it had never existed or at least that she had never touched, emptied, it, had not come out and taken the basket up with that air which had nothing whatever of furtiveness in it nor even defiance, who doubtless tasted the food, criticised its quality or cooking, chewed and swallowed it and felt it digest yet still clung to that delusion, that calm incorrigible insistence that that which all incontrovertible evidence tells her is so does not exist, as women can.

Judge Benbow had appointed himself executor of her father’s estate, but that same self deluding declined to admit that the liquidation of the store had left her something, that she had been left anything but a complete pauper, who would not accept the actual money from the sale of the store from Judge Benbow yet would accept the money’s value (and after a few years, over-value) in a dozen ways: would use casual negro boys who happened to pass the house, stopping them and commanding them to rake her yard and they doubtless as aware as the town was that there would be no mention of pay from her, that they would not even see her again though they knew she was watching them from behind the curtains of a window, but that Judge Benbow would pay them — would enter the stores and command objects from the shelves and showcases and walk out of the store with them — who with the same aberrant cunning which would not wash the dishes and napkins from the baskets declined to have any discussion of her affairs with Benbow since she must have known that the sums which she had received from him must have years ago over-balanced whatever the store had brought.

Already in the first year of her father’s voluntary incarceration, dated at two oclock in the morning, she had written the first of her odes to Southern soldiers. After the war, she established herself as the town’s and the county’s poetess laureate by issuing to the stern and meager subscription list of the county newspaper poems, ode, eulogy, and epitaph, out of some bitter and implacable reserve of undefeat. By 1885, her portfolio contained a thousand or more pieces.

After her niece Judith Sutpen died in 1884, she commanded a two hundred dollar headstone from Judge Benbow.

Refused at the last to be a ghost. Visited Sutpen’s Hundred in September 1909 with Quentin (III) Compson to find that Henry had returned and was hiding there. Returned with an ambulance around Christmas, upon which Clytemnestra set fire to the house, killing herself and Henry. Had to be transported back in the ambulance herself, subsequently entering a coma. Died almost two weeks later, 8 January 1910. Buried the next day.

Caddy. Born 1891–92, died after 1943. Second-oldest child of Jason (III) and Caroline Compson, mother of Quentin (IV). Doomed and knew it, accepted the doom without either seeking or fleeing it. Loved her brother Quentin (III) despite him, loved not only him but loved in him that bitter prophet and inflexible corruptless judge of what he considered the family ‘s honor and its doom, as he thought he loved but really hated in her what he considered the frail doomed vessel of its pride and the foul instrument of its disgrace, not only this, she loved him not only in spite of but because of the fact that he himself was incapable of love, accepting the fact that he must value above all not her but the virginity of which she was custodian and on which she placed no value whatever: the frail physical stricture which to her was no more than a hangnail would have been. Knew the brother loved death best of all and was not jealous, would (and perhaps in the calculation and deliberation of her marriage did) have handed him the hypothetical hemlock.

Had several boyfriends, including Dalton Ames, who may have been the father of Quentin (IV), which regardless of what its sex would be she had already named after the brother whom they both (she and her brother) knew was already the same as dead. Married Sydney Herbert Head on 25 April 1910, whom she and her mother had met while vacationing at French Lick the summer before and who gifted her the first car in Jefferson. Already two months pregnant of Quentin (IV) at that point and therefore felt she got to marry someone. Divorced by Herbert Head in 1911, likely because he discovered Quentin (IV) was not his. Entrusted her into the care of her mother and her brother Jason Compson (IV), and departed by the next train. Sent money to Jason (IV) each month for her daughter’s upbringing, who kept it for himself and who generally prevented her from seeing Quentin (IV) again. Seemingly prostituted herself for some time. Not invited to her father’s funeral, but attended it incognito after reading about it in the newspaper.

Remarried 1920 to a minor movingpicture magnate, Hollywood California. Divorced by mutual agreement, Mexico 1925. Vanished in Paris with the German occupation, 1940, still beautiful and probably still wealthy too since she did not look within fifteen years of her actual fortyeight, whereafter she was not seen or heard of again, except by her high school class mate Melissa Meek, who in 1943 recognised her in a picture, a photograph in color clipped obviously from a slick magazine—a picture filled with luxury and money and sunlight—a Cannebière backdrop of mountains and palms and cypresses and the sea, an open powerful expensive chromium/rimmed sports car, the woman’s face hatless between a rich scarf and a seal coat, ageless and beautiful, cold serene and damned; beside her a handsome lean man of middleage in the ribbons and tabs of a German staffgeneral.

Wife of Jason Compson (III). Mother of Quentin (III), Candace, Jason (IV) and Maury Compson. Considered only Jason (IV) to be a Bascomb like herself and her only brother Maury. Despite her husband’s pleading, refused to allow Candace to return after she was divorced by Herbert Head, or even for her name to be pronounced thenceforth. Burned the cheques Candace sent her each month for the upbringing of her daughter Quentin (IV), not knowing that they were in fact replaced by her son Jason (IV) with duplicates, who kept the originals for himself, pretending they were his salary, made out in his mother’s name, having power of attorney over her. Believed herself to be nothing but a burden on him.

Son of Quentin Maclachan Compson (I), father of Jason Lycurgus Compson (I). Attainted and proscribed by name and grade in his British regiment. Left for dead in a Georgia swamp in 1778 by his own retreating army and then by the advancing American one, both of which were wrong. He still had his father’s claymore even when on his homemade wooden leg he finally overtook his father and son in 1782 at Harrodsburg, Kentucky, just in time to bury the father and enter upon a long period of being a split personality while still trying to be the schoolteacher which he believed he wanted to be, until he gave up at last and became the gambler he actually was . Succeeded at last in risking not only his neck but the security of his family and the very integrity of the name he would leave behind him, by joining the confederation headed by an acquaintance named Wilkinson in a plot to secede the whole Mississippi Valley from the United States and join it to Spain. Fled in his turn when the bubble burst (as anyone except a Compson schoolteacher should have known it would), himself unique in being the only one of the plotters who had to flee the country: this not from the vengeance and retribution of the government which he had attempted to dismember, but from the furious revulsion of his late confederates now frantic for their own safety. He was not expelled from the United States, he talked himself countryless, his expulsion due not to the treason but to his having been so vocal and vociferant in the conduct of it, burning each bridge vocally behind him before he had even reached the place to build the next one: so that it was no provost marshal nor even a civic agency but his late coplotters themselves who put afoot the movement to evict him from Kentucky and the United States and, if they had caught him, probably from the world too. Fled by night, running true to family tradition, with his son and the old claymore and the tartan.

Born before 1782. Son of Charles Stuart Compson, father of Quentin Maclachan Compson (II). Named by his father who perhaps still believed with his heart that what he wanted to be was a classicist schoolteacher.

Driven perhaps by the compulsion of the flamboyant name rode up the Natchez Trace one day in 1811 with a pair of fine pistols and one meagre saddlebag on a small lightwaisted but stronghocked mare which could do the first two furlongs in definitely under the halfminute and the next two in not appreciably more, though that was all. But it was enough: reached the Chickasaw Agency that would become Jefferson and went no further.

Participated in races against the horses of Chickasaw chief Ikkemotubbe’s young men which he was always careful to limit to a quarter or at most three furlongs. Within six months was the Agent’s clerk and within twelve his partner, officially still the clerk though actually halfowner of what was now a considerable store stocked with his mare’s winnings.

After a year, traded his mare with Ikkemotubbe in return for a forested solid square mile of land where he established Compson Place and which someday would be almost in the center of the town of Jefferson.

In 1833, installed Alexander Holston’s lock on the jail door to protect a group of captured bandits against lynching, an act which set into motion a chain of events over the course of the following days resulting in the formal transformation of the settlement into the town named Jefferson.

After work began on Jefferson’s town square in 1834, the first formal survey revealed that Compson Place was so large that the new courthouse would have been only another of his outbuildings. Sold part of his land to the town corporation, at his price.

By 1835, had acquired his first slaves.

Died 1900. Son of Quentin Maclachan Compson (II), husband of Mrs Compson, father of Jason Richmond Compson (III).

After the arrival of Thomas Sutpen in 1933, lent him the seeds with which he started his plantation and became the nearest thing to a friend that Sutpen ever had in Yoknapatawpha County, a friendship that may have helped him to gain a foothold. In the Summer of 1834, joined Sutpen in his pursuit of his run-away Architect.

Married in 1837 or 1838 with Mrs Compson.

Following the outbreak of the Civil War, became Colonel of the 11th Mississippi Infantry regiment, of which Sutpen’s sons Henry and Charles Bon were also members. Failed at Shiloh in 1862. Lost his right arm. Returned home to recover. Was promoted to Brigadier General and rejoined the army in 1864. Failed again though not so badly at Resaca.

In 1869, participated in the construction of the Jefferson railroad into Tennessee with John Sartoris (I) and Ben J Redmond, but was bought out before its completion following a quarrel. In 1870, after Thomas Sutpen’s death, helped his daughter Judith sell his crossroads store and gave her an advance to buy a headstone for Charles (I) Bon. In 1879, quashed an indictment against Charles (I) Bon’s son Charles (II) Etienne De Saint Valery Bon for badly injuring a man and paid his fine and gave him money to move away to be whatever he wanted among strangers.

Put the first mortgage on the Compson Place to a New England carpetbagger in 1866, after the old town had been burned by the Federal General Smith and the new little town had begun to encroach and then nibble at and into it as he spent the next forty years selling fragments of it off to keep up the mortgage on the remainder: until one day in 1900 he died quietly on an army cot in the hunting and fishing camp in the Tallahatchie River bottom where he passed most of the end of his days.

Completed three avatars—the one as son of a brilliant and gallant statesman, the second as battleleader of brave and gallant men, the third as a sort of privileged pseudo-Daniel Boone- Robinson Crusoe, who had not returned to juvenility because actually he had never left it Harboured who knows what dream that his son’s lawyer’s office might again be the anteroom to the governor’s mansion and the old splendor.

Died 1912. Son of Jason Lycurgus Compson (II), husband of Caroline Compson, father of Quentin (III), Candace, Jason (IV) and Maury Compson. Lawyer, keeping an office upstairs above the Square. Alcoholic and ineffectual, but a source of advice to his son Quentin (III). Sat all day long in the house with a decanter of whiskey and a litter of dogeared Horaces and Livys and Catulluses, composing (it was said) caustic and satiric eulogies on both his dead and his living fellowtownsmen. In 1909, sold the remainder of the Compson Place, except that fragment containing the house and the kitchengarden and the collapsing stables and one servant’s cabin in which Dilsey Gibons’s family lived, to a golfclub for the ready money with which his daughter Candace could have her fine wedding and his son Quentin could finish one year at Harvard, i.e. not to buy drink but to give one of his descendants at least the best chance in life he could think of. Unsuccessfully tried to persuade his wife Caroline to take Candace back in after she had been divorced by her husband Herbert Head in 1911.

Born 1892–94. Youngest-but-one son of Jason (III) and Caroline Compson.

After his parents had sold off part of the Compson place to pay for his sister Candace’s (failed) marriage to Sydney Head and his brother Quentin (III)’s first year at Harvard (which ended in suicide), used his own niggard savings out of his meagre wages as a storeclerk to send himself to a Memphis school where he learned to class and grade cotton. Started working in Earl Triplett’s farmers’ supply store in Jefferson in 1916. Begrudged Candace and her daughter Quentin (IV) missing out on a position at Sydney Head’s bank that he had been promised, since Sydney Head probably divorced Candace because he discovered Quentin (IV) was not his. Kept for himself the 200 dollar sent each month by Candace for her daughter Quentin (IV), replacing the cheque with a fake one for their mother to burn, and banking the real cheques as his salary on his mother’s account, whom they were made out to and over whom he had power of attorney. His actual salary may have been 160 dollar a month. Used the 1000 dollar his mother invested for him in Earl Triplett’s business to buy himself a car. Had regular headaches, which his mother believed were caused by the gasoline of the car.

The first sane Compson since before Culloden and (a childless bachelor) hence the last. Logical rational contained and even a philosopher in the old stoic tradition: thinking nothing whatever of God one way or the other and simply considering the police and so fearing and respecting only the Negro woman, his sworn enemy since his birth and his mortal one since that day in 1911 when she Dilsey Gibson too divined by simple clairvoyance that he was somehow using his infant niece Quentin IV’s illegitimacy to blackmail its mother.

“Following his dipsomaniac father’s death, he assumed the entire burden of the rotting family in the rotting house, supporting his idiot brother Maury Compson because of their mother, sacrificing what pleasures might have been the right and just due and even the necessity of a thirty-year-old bachelor, so that his mother’s life might continue as nearly as possible to what it had been this not because he loved her but (a sane man always) simply because he was afraid of the Negro cook Dilsey Gibson whom he could not even force to leave even when he tried to stop paying her weekly wages.

After his brother Maury touched a passing schoolgirl outside the fence delimiting the Compson Place, had himself appointed the idiot’s guardian without letting their mother know and had it castrated before their mother even knew it was out of the house.

Not only fended off end held his own with Compsons but competed and held his own with the Snopeses who took over the little town Jefferson following the turn of the century as the Compsons and Sartorises and their ilk faded from it. Managed to save almost three thousand dollars ($2840.50) in niggard and agonised dimes and quarters and halfdollars, which hoard he kept in no bank because to him a banker too was just one more Compson, but hid in a locked bureau drawer in his bedroom whose bed he made and changed himself since he kept the bedroom door locked all the time save when he was passing through it. To him all the rest of the town and the world and the human race too except himself were Compsons, inexplicable yet quite predictable in that they were in no sense whatever to be trusted.

On 7 April 1928, his niece Quentin (IV) broke into his room through the window and took off with his savings. He unsuccessfully pursued her to Mottson. The amount she stole was not $2840.50, it was almost seven thousand dollars and this was Jason’s rage, the red unbearable fury which on that night and at intervals recurring with little or no diminishment for the next five years, made him seriously believe would at some unwarned instant destroy him, kill him as instantaneously dead as a bullet or a lightningbolt: that although he had been robbed not of a mere petty three thousand dollars but of almost seven thousand he couldn’t even tell anybody; because he had been robbed of seven thousand dollars instead of just three he could not only never receive justification — he did not want sympathy — from other men unlucky enough to have one bitch for a sister and another for a niece, he couldn’t even go to the police; because he had lost four thousand dollars which did not belong to him he couldn’t even recover the three thousand which did since those first four thousand dollars were not only the legal property of his niece as a part of the money supplied for her support and maintenance by her mother over the last sixteen years, they did not exist at all, having been officially recorded as expended and consumed in the annual reports he submitted to the district Chancellor, as required of him as guardian and trustee by his bondsmen: so that he had been robbed not only of his thievings but his savings too, and by his own victim; he had been robbed not only of the four thousand dollars which he had risked jail to acquire but of the three thousand which he had hoarded at the price of sacrifice and denial, almost a nickel and a dime at a time, over a period of almost twenty years: and this not only by his own victim but by a child who did it at one blow, without premeditation or plan, not even knowing or even caring how much she would find when she broke the drawer open; and now he couldn’t even go to the police for help: he who had considered the police always, never given them any trouble, had paid the taxes for years which supported them in parasitic and sadistic idleness; not only that, he didn’t dare pursue the girl himself because he might catch her and she would talk, so that his only recourse was a vain dream which kept him tossing and sweating on nights two and three and even four years after the event, when he should have forgotten about it: of catching her without warning, springing on her out of the dark, before she had spent all the money, and murder her before she had time to open her mouth.

Probably between 1928 and 1933, he took over the farmers’ supply store from Earl Triplett.

After the death of his mother in 1933 he (no Snopes, but Jason Compson himself) committed his brother Maury to the state asylum in Jackson and vacated the Compson Place, first chopping up the vast oncesplendid rooms into what he called apartments and selling the whole thing to a countryman who opened a boardinghouse in it. Thus he was able to free himself forever not only from the idiot brother and the house but from the Negro woman too, moving into a pair of offices up a flight of stairs above the supplystore containing his cotton ledgers and samples, which he had converted into a bedroom-kitchen-bath, in and out of which on weekends there would be seen a big plain friendly brazenhaired pleasantfaced woman Lorraine no longer very young, in round picture hats and (in its season) an imitation fur coat, the two of them, the middleaged cottonbuyer and the woman whom the town called, simply, his friend from Memphis, seen at the local picture show on Saturday night and on Sunday morning mounting the apartment stairs with paper bags from the grocer’s containing loaves and eggs and oranges and cans of soup, domestic, uxorious, connubial, until the late afternoon bus carried her back to Memphis. He was emancipated now. He was free. ‘In 1865,’ he would say, ‘Abe Lincoln freed the niggers from the Compsons. In 1933, Jason Compson freed the Compsons from the niggers.’

Benjy. Born 7 April 1895. Youngest son of Caroline and Jason Compton III. Mentally handicapped. Originally named after his maternal uncle Maury Bascomb, but rechristened Benjamin by his brother Quentin (Benjamin, our lastborn, sold into Egypt) at age five (in November 1900) when at last even his mother realised what he was and insisted weeping that his name must be changed. Stopped sleeping in the same bed as his sister Candace at age 13. Castrated in 1913 for going through the gate of the Compson place one day and touching a passing school girl. Attended successively by Versh Gibson, T.P. Gibson and Luster.

Loved three things: the pasture which was sold to pay for Candace’s wedding and to send Quentin to Harvard, his sister Candace, firelight. Who lost none of them because he could not remember his sister but only the loss of her, and firelight was the same bright shape as going to sleep, and the pasture was even better sold than before because now he and TP could not only follow timeless along the fence the motions which it did not even matter to him were humanbeings swinging golfsticks, TP could lead them to clumps of grass or weeds where there would appear suddenly in TP’s hand small white spherules which competed with and even conquered what he did not even know was gravity and all the immutable laws when released from the hand toward plank floor or smokehouse wall or concrete sidewalk.

Committed to the state asylum in Jackson by his brother Jason (IV) after the death of their mother Caroline in 1933. Lost nothing then either because, as with his sister, he remembered not the pasture but only its loss, and firelight was still the same bright shape of sleep. tSatF

Husband of Mrs Compson. Had been locked up for crazy a long time ago because in the slack parts of the afternoons he would gather up eight or ten little niggers from the quarters and line them up across the creek from him with sweet potatoes on their heads and he would shoot the potatoes off with a rifle; he would tell them he might miss a potato, but he wasn’t going to miss a nigger, and so they would stand mighty still.

Wife of Jason Lycurgus Compson (II). Not from Jefferson. Married in 1837–8.

A good deal older than Rosa Millard. Wife of Mr Compson. Asked by Rosa Millard to look after the Sartoris Place flowers during her aborted attempt to reach her sister in Memphis in the summer of 1863. Lent her a hat, a parasol and a hand mirror after the Sartoris Place was burnt down by a Federate regiment, which she would keep until her death in December 1864.

Born 1698–99, Glasgow, died 1782. Father of Charles Stuart Compson. Son of a Glasgow printer, orphaned and raised by his mother’s people in the Perth highlands. Fled to Carolina from Culloden Moor with a claymore and the tartan he wore by day and slept under by night, and little else. At eighty, having fought once against an English king and lost, he would not make that mistake twice and so fled again one night in 1779, with his infant grandson Jason Lycurgus I and the tartan (the claymore had vanished, along with his son, about a year ago) into Kentucky, where a neighbor named Boon or Boone had already established a settlement Boonesborough.

Son of Jason Lycurgus Compson (I), father of Jason Lycurgus Compson (II). Governor of Mississippi. Brilliant and gallant statesman.

Born 1891, died 2 June 1910. Eldest child of Caroline and Jason Compson (III). Used to go out hunting with Versh Gibson all day. Considered honeysuckle to be the saddest odour of all.

In September 1919 taken into confidence by Rosa Coldfield and his father about Thomas Sutpen. Accompanied Coldfield to Sutpen’s Hundred to find Henry Sutpen, who had been hiding there. Thereafter sent to Harvard to study Law, where he became the room mate of Shrevlin McCannon. In January 1920, the pair unraveled the last strands of the family history of Thomas Sutpen and his proginy.

Committed suicide by drowning himself late on 2 June 1910. Fought with Gerald Bland earlier that day, receiving all of the beating himself.

Who loved not his sister Candace’s body but some concept of Compson honor precariously and (he knew well) only temporarily supported by the minute fragile membrane of her maidenhead as a miniature replica of all the whole vast globy earth may be poised on the nose of a trained seal. Who loved not the idea of the incest which he would not commit, but some presbyterian concept of its eternal punishment: he, not God, could by that means cast himself and his sister both into hell, where he could guard her forever and keep her forevermore intact amid the eternal fires. But who loved death above all, who loved only death, loved and lived in a deliberate and almost perverted anticipation of death as a lover loves and deliberately refrains from the waiting willing friendly tender incredible body of-his beloved, until he can no longer bear not the refraining but the restraint and so flings, hurls himself relinquishing, drowning waiting first to complete the current academic year and so get the full value of his paid-in-advance tuition, not because he had his old Culloden and Carolina and Kentucky grandfathers in him but because the remaining piece of the Compson place which had been sold to pay for his sister’s wedding and his year at Harvard had been the one thing, excepting that same sister and the sight of an open fire, which his youngest brother Maury, born an idiot, had loved.

Born November–December 1910. Daughter of Candace Compson. Her father may have been Dalton Ames. Named Quentin before her sex was known and regardless of it. Fatherless nine months before her birth, nameless at birth and already doomed to be unwed from the instant the dividing egg determined its sex. Raised by her grandmother Caroline Compson after Candace was put out on the street by her husband. Cheated by her uncle and guardian Jason Compson (IV) out of the money sent by her mother for her upbringing. Skipped school. Only Luster and her uncle Maury Compson knew that she climbed out of her window down a pear tree each night for rendezvous with boyfriends, while Caroline and Jason believed she was doing homework.

On 7 April 1928, swung herself by a rainpipe from the window of the room in which her uncle had locked her at noon, to the locked window of his own locked and empty bedroom and broke a pane and entered the window and with the uncle’s firepoker burst open the locked bureau drawer and took her uncle’s savings almost seven thousand dollars, four thousand of which from her mother and meant for her and climbed down the same rainpipe in the dusk and ran away with the pitchman who was already under sentence for bigamy. And so vanished; whatever occupation overtook her would have arrived in no chromium Mercedes; whatever snapshot would have contained no general of staff.

Friend of Gerald Bland in 1910. Present during the car trip near Cambridge on the day Quentin Compson (III) committed suicide.

Father of three. Federate Colonel in the _th Ohio cavalry. In the Summer of 1862, called off a search of the Sartoris Place ordered by Sergeant Harrison after Bayard Sartoris (II) and Marengo Strother shot dead with the family musket the best horse of their passing troop. In 1863, Rosa Millard came to him in Alabama after another regiment had burnt down the Sartoris Place — he arranged for a requisition order signed by General Andrew Jackson Smith on 14 August for 110 mules, 110 negroes, ten chests and provisions.

Buddy. Youngest son of Mr Drake. At Yale in May 1929.

Judge in Jackson. Father of four sons, two of whom in 1929 were lawyers, one who was a newspaper man, and one, Hubert, who was still at Yale, and at least one daughter, Temple Drake. His wife had died before 1929.

Born 1825–26. Friend of Bayard Sartoris (II), as deaf. Lived some three miles outside Jefferson in 1919.

Daughter of Mr Farmer, Jefferson’s jailor. Frail and workless. Sat in one of the jail’s windows, musing, hour after hour and day and month and year. Scratched her name and the date into the window pane with a diamond ring on 16 April 1861, the inscription still there in 1951. In late May 1865, married a Lieutenant who had come to take her to his Alabama hill farm he had inherited from his father, and whom she had only ever briefly seen once before, when, the previous year, they briefly looked at each other through the window as he retreated from the advancing Federal troops who would occupy Jefferson, the first words they exchanged being their marriage vows. Possibly became a farmless mother of farmers, giving birth to a dozen children, all boys, and surviving her husband, possibly became the wife of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico.

Father of Cecilia Farmer. Failed farmer. Jailor at Jefferson jail in 1861. Obtained his position through the size of his extended family and concomitant political clout.

Private in John Sartoris (I)’s regiment. Very badly wounded in their first battle. Recovered and found Jesus. Rekindled local church life together with Rosa Millard, acting as de facto minister. Methodist. Led Rosa Millard’s funeral in December 1864, despite that Mrs Compson and some other Jefferson residents had arranged for a big preacher refugeeing from Memphis or somewhere.

Famed southern horse thief during the Civil War.

Wife of Roskus Gibson. Mother of Versh, Frony and T.P. Cook at the Compson Place. Moved to Memphis after Caroline Compson died in 1933 and her son Jason Compson IV sold the house, since she refused to go further (Frony lived in St. Louis at the time but joined her in Memphis). Near blind in her last years.

Died before 1928. Husband of Dilsey Gibson, father of Versh, Frony and T.P. Servant (his tasks included driving and milking) at the Compson Place. Had bad rheumatism.

Youngest (?) child of Roskus and Dilsey Gibson. Servant at the Compson Place. Took Maury Compson to the graveyard each Sunday in a wagon pulled by Queenie, passing the monument of the Confederate soldier on Jefferson’s square to the right. Who wore on Memphis’s Beale Street the fine bright cheap intransigent clothes manufactured specifically for him by the owners of Chicago and New York sweatshops.

Eldest (?) child of Roskus and Dilsey Gibson. Servant at the Compson Place, attendant of Maury Compson in his first years. Used to go out hunting with Quentin Compson (III) all day.

Son of Mr Gillespie.

Father of Mack Gillespie. Farmer. In July 1927, allowed the Bundren family to camp at his farm and store the coffin containing Addie Bundren’s corpse, which they planned to burry in Jefferson, in his barn. During the night, the barn was burned down by Darl Bundren in a failed attempt to incinerate his mother’s corpse, although his cow, horse and mules were rescued.

United States marshal in Jefferson in 1925. Lean clean tobacco-chewing old man.

Died 22 June 1929. Moonshiner, common law husband of Ruby Lamar and father of an unnamed boy. Entered a relationship with Ruby before 1915, when he went to the Philippines for a year to serve as a cavalry sergeant. In early 1916, five months before the end of his stay, killed a fellow soldier over a black woman. Sent to Leavenworth upon his return, where he was visited by Ruby every second Sunday, then to World War I France to fight with the infantry, earning two medals, then back to Leavenworth, until his lawyer got a congressman to get him free. Beat up Ruby upon finding out she had paid the lawyer through prostitution. Their plans of formal marriage were forestalled by a lack of funds. At some point (probably before 1915) also served on the Mexican border. Started moonshining at the Old Frenchman Place in 1925, accompanied by Ruby, his father, Tommy, Van and at some point, Memphis gangster Popeye. His and Ruby’s son was born in 1928. Arrested for Popeye’s murder of Tommy and rape of Temple Drake on 12 May 1929. Defended by Horace Benbow in the subsequent court case, but wrongfully convicted on 21 June after Temple Drake falsely identified him as the perpetrator, and lynched (for Temple’s Drake rape, not for Tommy’s murder) between 00:30 and 01:00 hrs in the following night, by being burned alive in a vacant lot in an alley next to the jail.

Died after May 1929. Father of Lee Goodwin. With him at Old Frenchman Place in the years up until Lee’s arrest and subsequent lynching in 1929. Blind and deaf.

Born 1899–1900. Common law wife of Lee Goodwin and mother with him of an unnamed boy. Entered her relationship with Goodwin before he went to the Philippines as a cavalry sergeant in 1915. A previous boyfriend (Frank) was shot by her father after refusing to stop seeing her. When Goodwin went to the Philippines, stayed behind in San Francisco, got a job and lived in a hall room, all the while staying faithful to him. When she found out about the return of his company, had to quit her job to meet him at the harbour, where she found out from another soldier that he had been imprisoned at Leavenworth. Had to get another job for two months to save enough money to join him at Leavenworth, where she lived in a single room for two years, cooking over a gasjet, and worked night shifts at Child’s as a waitress so she could see him every other Sunday afternoon. Prostituted herself to a lawyer for two months before finding out that he couldn’t do anything for Goodwin, him being a federal prisoner. When Goodwin was sent to fight in World War I France, moved to New York and worked in a munitions plant, ‘staying straight’, despite ample romantic opportunities both in the factory and from soldiers returning from the war. When Goodwin was again sent to Leavenworth after the war, prostituted herself to pay for a lawyer to get a congressman to get him released, for this beat up by him. Lack of money prevented their formal marriage. From 1925 until Goodwin’s arrest, wrongful conviction and lynching in May and June 1929, went to live at the Old Frenchman Place with him, where he moonshined and she looked after the household, having to walk a mile six times a day to get water, and where she delivered their son in 1928. If she had her way, would hang every man that makes whisky or sells or drinks it, every God’s one of them.

Born 1928. Son of Ruby and Lee Goodwin. In poor health.

Born with a club foot. Raised in Jefferson, attending the same school as Horace and Narcissa Benbow. Drove first a grocery wagon, then a truck, then went to Oxford State University to study law. During his first year, waited on tables at the commons, and he had the government contract for carrying the mail to and from the local post-office at the arrival of each train, hobbling along with the sack over his shoulder: a pleasant, open-faced young man with a word for everyone and a certain alert rapacity about the eyes. Left these jobs during his second year. Participated for three years in poker games organised in Mr Harris’s livery stable office, a fact that only became known after his graduation.

In 1919 an acquaintance of Bayard Sartoris (III), frequenting Deacon Rogers’s shop.

Elected District Attorney in the winter of 1928/9. Obtained on 21 June 1929 the wrongful conviction of Lee Goodwin for the murder of Tommy and the rape of Temple Drake.

Friend of Eustace in 1919, served on the British front in the spring of 1918.

Died 1837. Huguenot, younger son. One of Yoknapatawpha County’s three original settlers. Came riding across Tennessee from the Cumberland Gap in the late eighteenth century along with Samuel Habersham and Alexander Holston. Brought the first slaves into the country and was granted the first big land patent and so became the first cotton planter. His plantation, Frenchman’s Bend, was vast, and half of it fell outside Yoknapatawpha County. His main residence came to be known as Old Frenchman Place.

Farm worker for Mr Snopes in 1927.

Proprietor of a hardware store in Mottson in 1927.

Wife of Mr Habersham. Leading lady in post-civil war Jefferson. In 1865, personally drove John Sartoris and Drusilla Hawk to the Minister to be wedded, after the ceremony had been delayed as they were busy thwarting the election of Cassius Q Benbow as Marshall of Jefferson.

Born c 1790. Son of Samuel Habersham. Half-orphan on his mother’s side. In the late eighteenth century, at the age of eight, came riding with his father across Tennessee from the Cumberland Gap into what was to become Yoknapatawpha County. At twelve or fourteen had already turned Indian and renegade in the opinion of the settlement. At 25, married Mrs Habersham, a daughter of Chickasaw chief Ikkemotubbe. In 1837, emigrated to Oklahoma along with his Chickasaw in-laws.

Husband of Martha Habersham. Employed in Jefferson’s new bank in 1865.

Daughter of Chickasaw chief Ikkemotubbe, wife of Mr Habersham. Emigrated to Oklahoma in 1837 along with her husband and the rest of the Chickasaw nation.

Died in the first few decades of the nineteenth century. Doctor. One of Yoknapatawpha County’s three original settlers, and founder of Jefferson. Came riding across Tennessee from the Cumberland Gap in the late eighteenth century along with Louis Grenier, his half groom half bodyguard Alexander Holston and his eight-year-old son. Befriended Chickasaw chief Issetibbeha and became Chickasaw agent, first unofficially then officially. His trading post gradually grew to become the town of Jefferson. Resigned as agent in a letter of furious denunciation addressed to the President of the United States himself.

Justice in Jefferson. Liked to hear himself talk in public. In 1979, unsuccessfully indicted Charles (II) Etienne De Saint Valery Bon for badly injuring a man at a negro ball held in a cabin a few miles from Sutpen’s Hundred.

Livery stable owner at Oxford State University, host of poker games that Eustace Graham participated in for three years.

Federate sergeant who in the Summer of 1862 ordered a search of the Sartoris Place after Bayard Sartoris (II) and Marengo Strother shot dead with the family musket the best horse of his passing troop, until the search was called off by Colonel Nathaniel Dick.

Husband of Martha (?). Avid possum hunter (including with Quentin Compson (III) and Versh Gibson). Gave driving lessons to Candace Compson.

Wife of Louis Hatcher (?).

Died 1861–62. Husband of Louise Hawk, Father of Drusilla Sartoris and Denison Hawk (II). Killed in the civil war. Buried in Hawkhurst’s graveyard, his grave marked with a marble shaft.

Denny. Born 1852–3. Son of Dennison (I) and Louisa Hawk, brother of Drusilla Sartoris. Married in 1872, studied law in Montgomery.

Sister of Rosa Millard, wife of Dennison Hawk (I), mother of Drusilla Sartoris and Dennison Hawk (II). Convinced and horrified that Drusilla had become John Sartoris (I)’s common-law wife, she traveled to the Sartoris Place in the Spring of 1865 to force their marriage.

Born c 1875–1880, South Bend, Indiana. Eligible. Expelled from his club for cheating at cards, expelled from school for cheating at midterm exams. Married Candace Compson on 25 April 1910 after meeting her and her mother the previous summer at French Lick. Gifted her the first car in Jefferson. Unfaithful to her. Divorced her in 1911, in all likelihood after discovering that she had already become pregnant from another man when they had married.

Boy who saved the life of Bayard Sartoris (III) on 3 July 1919 by (together with his father) recovering him from a creek after he had driven off a bridge.

Sister of Belle Mitchell (I). Married at eighteen, deserted her husband in Honolulu and ran of with an Englishman to Australia, who deserted her in Bombay. In Calcutta, remarried, to an American Standard Oil employee, only to divorce him the year after. Had a short affair with Horace Benbow in December 1919, who at that time was due to marry her sister.

Friend of Gerald Bland in 1910. Present during the car trip near Cambridge on the day Quentin Compson (III) committed suicide.

Born Carolina, died 1839, Jefferson. One of Yoknapatawpha County’s three original white settlers. Childless and unmarried, brawny and taciturn. In the late eighteenth century came riding from Carolina along with Samuel Habersham and Louis Grenier, through the Cumberland Gap and across Tennessee. Half groom half bodyguard to Habersham and half nurse half tutor to his son. Went to live in Habersham’s Chickasaw trading post, the future town of Jefferson, and became its first publican, establishing the tavern known as the Holston House. Carried with him from Carolina a fifteen-pound iron lock that was used to symbolical effect on the Nashville mail pouch while it was kept in the trading store, and that in 1933 became the first lock of the jail, before disappearing that same day along with three formerly enclosed bandits.

Crippled with arthritis in old age.

Jefferson resident, 1865.

Lived near Frenchman Bend in 1927.

Ancient janitor at Bayard Sartoris (II)’s bank in 1919.

Putative suitor of Narcissa Sartoris until the Spring of 1928.

Daughter of Wash Jones, mother of Milly Jones. Date of birth unknown. In 1850, moved into an abandoned fishing camp on Sutpen’s Hundred with her father. Gave birth to her daughter Milly in 1853. Rumored to have died in a Memphis brothel.

Born 1853, Sutpen’s Hundred, died 12 August 1869, Sutpen’s Hundred. Daughter of Melicent Jones, mother of an unnamed girl with Thomas Sutpen. Grew up in the abandoned fishing camp at Sutpen’s Hundred her family had moved to. Forced into a relationship with Thomas Sutpen in 1867. Gave birth to a girl in the morning 12 August 1869, upon which her grandfather Wash killed first Thomas Sutpen, and that evening also her and the girl.

Born 1803–08, died 12 August 1869, Sutpen’s Hundred. Father of Melicent Jones. Date and location of birth unknown. Gangling and malaria-ridden. Squatter, moved into an abandoned fishing camp on Sutpen’s Hundred with his daughter in 1850. Took care of her daughter Milly Jones after her disappearance. Hanger-on of Thomas Sutpen, handy man about Sutpen’s place while Sutpen was away in the Civil War, provided food to its remaining residents. They would drink together under the scuppernong arbor on the Sunday afternoons.

Killed Sutpen with a scythe on the morning of 12 August 1869, after his granddaughter Milly gave birth to a daughter by him and he insulted him. That same evening, killed also Milly and the infant with a butcher knife upon the arrival of sheriff Major de Spain. Then shot dead.

Professor at Quentin Compson (IV)’s school in 1928.

School teacher of Quentin Compson (III) in Jefferson.

Acquaintance of Cora Tull.

Slave at Hawkhurst in 1863.

Lived near Frenchman Bend in 1927.

Proprietor of a large boarding house in Frenchman’s Bend in 1919.

Born 1868–9. Second son of Virginius MacCallum (I) and his first wife. By 1919, took care of the MacCallum household and rarely visited town. Distilled excellent whiskey.

Born 1866(–7). Eldest son of Virginius MacCallum (I). Somewhat rheumatic.

Born 1880–3. Son of Virginius MacCallum (I) and his first wife. Married to a woman in Mount Vernon that by 1919 he rarely kept company with. Sickly as a child. Had a good tenor voice and accordingly in demand at Sunday singings.

Rafe. Born 1874–5. Son of Virginius MacCallum (I) and his first wife, twin brother of Stuart MacCallum. Friend of Bayard (III) and John (III) Sartoris.

Born 1874–5. Son of Virginius MacCallum (I) and his first wife, twin brother of Raphael MacCallum. Good farmer and canny trader, in possession of a respectable bank account. Started trading with Mr Samson in 1915.

Born 1844–5. Father of Jackson, Henry, Stuart, Rafe and Virginius (II) MacCallum, all but the last of which by his first wife, and possibly of Mandy. Walked to Lexington, Virginia, in 1861 to enlist. Served the next four years in the Stonewall brigade. Afterwards, walked back to Mississippi where in 1866 he built a house six miles outside of Mount Vernon and a good fourteen miles outside of Jefferson (in which he still lived in 1919) and married. Survived both this and a second wife.

Buddy. Born 1898–9. Not known by his real first name outside his family and the army. Only son of Virginius MacCallum (I) and his second wife. Friend of Bayard Sartoris (III). Ran away from home at seventeen to enlist, receiving a decoration in the war. Out hunting many a day with a pack of dogs, with no regard for the weather.

Drugstore employee in Jefferson under Dr Alford’s office. In July 1927, took sexual advantage of Dewey Dell Bundren’s ignorance, suggesting this would terminate her two-months pregnancy.

Born c 1911–21, died 13 March 1937, Jefferson. Probably married at least once. Illiterate. Probably did a number of types of manual labour including cotton chopping and cooking for working gangs and had the reputation in her home town of a tramp — a drunkard, a casual prostitute, being beaten by some man or cutting or being cut by his wife or his other sweetheart.

At one point miscarried at six months, after being kicked repeatedly in the stomach by a man that might have been the child’s father.

Reformed.

Became nurse in the Gowan and Temple Stevens household in early 1931, chosen by Temple so she could talk to someone with similar experiences. In September 1936, hid Temple’s valuables in an attempt to prevent her from eloping with her blackmailer Pete, to protect the Stevens’s children. When, on 13 September, this proved unsuccessful and Temple was about to leave, she smothered the youngest child, sacrificing it to secure Bucky’s future.

During her trial, she was defended by Gavin Stevens. Created an uproar in court by frankly admitting her guilt. Sentenced on 13 November to death by hanging.

While in prison, sang church hymns with Gavin Stevens, the jailor Mr Tubbs, his wife Mrs Tubbs and the other prisoners, on Sunday nights and all but one of the nights following the last Sunday.

I used to think maybe I would get to California too, some day. But I waited too long to get around to it.

Hanged on 13 March 1937.

Believed.

Friend of Belle Mitchell (I). Told Narcissa Benbow of Belle’s affair with Horace Benbow in June 1919.

Shreve. Born 1890, Edmonton, Alberta. Attended Harvard, 1909–1914. Room mate of Quentin Compton (III) during their first year. In January 1920, the pair unraveled the family history of Thomas Sutpen and his proginy. On 2 June 1910, present during the day trip near Cambridge in the course of which Quentin committed suicide.

Following the outbreak of WWI, became Captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps of the Canadian Expeditionary Forces in France, 1914–1918. Afterwards became a practising surgeon in Edmonton.

Buddy. Born 1781–1791. Son of Mr McCaslin, twin brother of Theophilus McCaslin. Following the death of their father, they moved into a two-room log house with about a dozen dogs , and let their slaves live in the manor of the McCaslin Place. According to John Sartoris (I), the two were far ahead of their time, believing that land did not belong to people but that people belonged to land. They supposedly had a system of bookkeeping by which their slaves could earn their freedom through work on the plantation. Improved the position of many dirt farmers by convincing them to pool their plots with the plantation, who in turn looked upon them like God.

Upon the outbreak of the civil war, the brothers wanted to join John Sartoris (I)’s regiment, but were refused due to their old age. Backed by the dirt farmer constituency, they first threatened to start a separate regiment, then to have John Sartoris (I) demoted by popular election, before the compromise was reached that one brother could join the regiment, to be decided by three hands of draw poker. Amadeus McCaslin won. The following year, after the second battle of Manassas, when John Sartoris (I) was demoted by his men, Amadeus McCaslin and his followers resigned in solidarity and followed him back to Mississippi, to become part of his irregular cavalry. In 1863, Amadeus McCaslin had become a Sergeant in Tennant’s brigade in Virginia.

Father of Amadeus and Theophilus McCaslin. Built the colonial manor on the McCaslin Place.

Buck. Born c 1781–1791. Son of Mr McCaslin, twin brother of Amadeus McCaslin. Following the death of their father, they moved into a two-room log house with about a dozen dogs, and let their slaves live in the manor of the McCaslin Place. According to John (I) Sartoris, the two were far ahead of their time, believing that land did not belong to people but that people belonged to land. They supposedly had a system of bookkeeping by which their slaves could earn their freedom through work on the plantation. Improved the position of many dirt farmers by convincing them to pool their plots with the plantation, who in turn looked upon them like God.

Upon the outbreak of the civil war, the brothers wanted to join John (I) Sartoris’s regiment, but were refused due to their old age. Backed by the dirt farmer constituency, they first threatened to start a separate regiment, then to have John (I) Sartoris demoted by popular election, before the compromise was reached that one brother could join the regiment, to be decided by three hands of draw poker. Theophilus McCaslin lost and stayed behind.

After Rosa Millard’s betrayal by Ab Snopes and murder by Grumby in December 1864, he accompanied Bayard (II) Sartoris and Marengo Strother in their pursuit first of Snopes, and then of Grumby’s group of bandits. By Christmas, the rheumatism in his right arm was so bad that he couldn’t hardly lift his hand. In late January or early February, they encountered gang member Matt Bowden, posing as a Tennessee slave owner, who shot McCaslin in the same right arm. The following day, they found Ab Snopes tied to a tree, left behind by the bandits for them to find, and the day after that, McCaslin, who had fallen ill due to his arm, went back to Jefferson with Snopes.

High school class mate of Candace Compson. Became county librarian in Jefferson where she spent the rest of her life trying to keep Forever Amber in its orderly overlapping avatars and Jurgen and Tom Jones out of the hands of the highschool juniors and seniors who could reach them down without even having to tip-toe from the back shelves where she herself would have to stand on a box to hide them. Never married. Mousesized and -coloured. Divined by simple instinct that Jason Compson (IV) was somehow using Candace’s daughter Quentin (IV)’s life and her illegitimacy both to blackmail the mother not only into staying away from Jefferson for the rest of her life but into appointing him sole unchallengeable trustee of the money she would send for the child’s maintenance, and had refused to speak to him at all since that day in 1928 when Quentin (IV) climbed down the rainpipe and ran away with the pitchman. Discovered a picture of Candace Compson in a magazine in 1943, although Jason Compson (IV) disputed her identity and Dilsey Gibson’s eysight (whom she visited in Memphis) was too poor to confirm it.

Died December 1864. Sister of Louisa Hawk, mother of Mrs Sartoris and matriarch of the Sartoris family after her death in labour in 1949. Had another sister in Memphis. After a Federate troop burned down the Sartoris Place, confiscated their two mules and took with them the chest with the family silver, she traveled to Alabama in June 1863 for compensation from Colonel Nathaniel Dick, who had treated her gentlemanly the previous year when her grandson Bayard (II) and Marengo Strother had shot dead a horse of his passing troop. He arranged for General Andrew Jackson Smith to sign on 14 August 1863 a requisition order for 110 mules, 110 negroes, ten chests and provisions. In the period up to October 1864, she went on to requisition 138 more mules through similar orders forged by Marengo Strother, 105 of which she sold back to Federate troops with the help of Ab Snopes. She rekindled local church life together with Mr Fortinbride (who acted as Minister) and to its members she distributed in a meticulously controlled manner the provisions, the proceeds from the sales and the mules that they could not sell because they had been branded. In December 1864, after they couldn’t requisition any more mules because word of the scheme had spread, because she had been forced to reveal her real name and because Federate troops were withdrawing from the region anyway, and after one such withdrawing regiment, alerted by Ab Snopes as to where she lived, had confiscated their remaining 60 odd mules, she let herself be talked into a plan by Ab Snopes to try to requisition the four horses of the group of bandits known as Grumby’s independents with a forged order from General Forrest, so as to have a starting capital of 1500 dollars for John Sartoris (I) to rebuild their plantation with. However, Snopes had already requisitioned the four horses before, and Grumpy panicked and shot her dead. Her funeral was attended by most Jefferson residents and by the hill people that had profited from her generosity.

Born 1910–1. Also called Little Belle , Little Mother (by Harry Mitchell), and one point Titania (by Horace Benbow). Daughter of Harry and Belle (I) Mitchell. After their divorce, moved with her mother and her second husband Horace Benbow to Kinston. Played the piano.

Born loony. ‘Uncle’ to Bayard Sartoris (II).

First husband of Belle Mitchell (I), whom he married c 1910. Their daughter Belle Mitchell (II) was born 1910-11, whom he insisted on calling little mother in public. Tennis player. Did not fight in WWI. Divorced by Belle (I) in 1919. Subsequently converted their residence into a boarding house.

Member of Simon Strother’s (baptist) congregation.

Born 1871. Respectable druggist, that kept store and raised a family and was a church member in Mottson. In July 1927, refused to sell Dewey Dell Bundren an abortifacient.

Friend of Reba Rivers. Looked after Uncle Bud for a few days at the time of Red’s murder in June 1929. Attended his funeral.

Colonel in the Federate army stationed in Mottstown in October 1864, having left Memphis eight days earlier.

Husband of Ms Patterson and father of at least one son. Sent candy to Maury Compson one summer. Gave Maury Bascomb a black eye after the latter had a letter delivered to Ms Patterson.

Wife of Mr Patterson and mother of at least one son. Possibly in an affair with Maury Bascomb, who wrote a letter to her one Christmas.

Doctor in Jefferson in 1833, successor of Samuel Habersham.

Born c 1840. Husband of Mrs Peabody, father of Lucius (II) Peabody. Doctor with a legendary reputation. The fattest man in Yoknapatawpha county, weighing three hundred and ten pounds and possessing a digestive tract like a horse. Filled the room with his bluff and homely humanity, and when he crossed the floor the whole building trembled to his tread.

Practiced medicine in Yoknapatawpha county when a doctor’s equipment consisted of a saw and a gallon of whisky and a satchel of calomel; he had been John (I) Sartoris’ regimental surgeon, and up to the day of the automobile he would start out at any hour of the twenty-four in any weather and for any distance, over practically impassable roads in a lopsided buckboard to visit anyone, white or black, who sent for him. Never worried a fellow before he was ready to pay; accepting for fee usually a meal of corn pone and coffee or perhaps a small measure of corn or fruit, or a few flower bulbs or graftings. When he was young and hasty he had kept a daybook, kept it meticulously until these hypothetical assets totalled $10,000.00. But that was in 1880, and since then he hadn’t bothered with a record at all; and later from time to time a countryman entered his shabby office and discharged an obligation, commemorating sometimes the payor’s entry into the world, incurred by his father or grandfather and which Dr Peabody himself had long since forgotten about. Every one in the county knew him and sent him hams and wild game at Christmas, and it was said that he could spend the balance of his days driving about the county in the buckboard he still used, with never a thought for board and lodging and without the expenditure of a penny for either.

Starting after the Civil War, partook in Thanksgiving and Christmas meals at the Sartoris Place. Claimed to have proposed to Virginia du Pre in the Sartoris garden in the spring of 1969, on John (I) Sartoris’ account because he was having more trouble than he could stand with politics outside his home, and pretty near had her persuaded for a while.

Courted his eventual wife for fourteen years before he was able to marry her. The courtship was during the days when he physicked and amputated the whole county by buckboard; often after a year’s separation he would drive forty miles to see her, to be intercepted on the way and deflected to a childbed or a mangled limb, with only a scribbled message to assuage the interval of another year. Their only child was born in 1890.

Amputated the leg of Mr Suratt.

By 1919, had six or seven black servants, and more unregistered ones. His library consisted of a stack of lurid paper covered nickel novels, slowly gathering successive layers of dust, and he passed his office hours on the sofa, reading them over and over.

Was still traversing the county to visit patients in 1927, attending to Addie Bundren as she lay dying. Reckoned he must reach the fifty-thousand dollar mark of dead accounts on his books before he could quit.

Born 1890. Only child of Lucius (I) Quintus and Mrs Peabody. Surgeon. Lived in New York.

Died c 1890–1919. Wife of Lucius (I) Peabody, mother of Lucius (II) Peabody. The period of her courtship lasted for fourteen years as Dr Peabody traversed the county ministering to patients; often after a year’s separation he would drive forty miles to see her, to be intercepted on the way and deflected to a childbed or a mangled limb, with only a scribbled message to assuage the interval of another year. After they were able to marry, she gave birth to their only child in 1890.

Slave owner in Virginia c 1815–20.

Born Virginia. Named by his mother after the President; the town Jefferson was in turn named after him. Frail, irascible little man weighing less than a hundred pounds. Fragile, wisp of a man ageless hairless, and toothless.

Rider, tasked from 1831 onwards to deliver, every two weeks, a mail pouch from Nashville to the settlement that would become Jefferson. Didn’t even carry any arms except a tin horn, not even deigning to pass quietly but instead announcing his solitary advent as far ahead of himself as the ring of the horn would carry. Refused, succinctly, in three words, one of which was printable to take with him the fifteen-pound lock that was attached to the mail bag every time it was kept in the settlement.

When in 1833 the lock was used to secure the prison instead, and subsequently disappeared along with its inmates, insisted that Federal property had been violated. Bribed into acquiescence when the settlement was named Jefferson after him and turned into a proper town.

Later ran a private pony express, until this was replaced by the Memphis stage-coach.

Died 1862. Husband of Virginia du Pre, killed at the very beginning of the Civil war, by a shell from a Federal frigate at Fort Moultrie, exactly two years after their marriage.

Father of Lon (II) Quick. In 1902, among several people to buy Texas ponies from Flem Snopes, and nobody but him ever caught his. One spring in the early 1920s, laid out forty acres of new ground, which he paid Jewel Bundren to clean up, who used the money to buy a descendant of those Texas ponies from him.

Son of Lon (I) Quick. Lived near Frenchman Bend in 1927.

Doctor looking after the inhabitants of Reba Rivers’s brothel.

Post trader in Jefferson in 1833. Son of a long pure line of Anglo-Saxon mountain people and father of an equally long and pure line of white trash tenant farmers who never owned a slave.

One of Reba Rivers’s two dogs (the one with the pink ribbon), which she acquired the day after her husband Binford Rivers died in 1927.

Redlaw. From Missouri. Attorney at Law. Cotton- and quartermaster-supplies speculator. During the Civil War, followed the Northern army to Memphis in 1861, forewent personal profit. In 1864, came to Jefferson with the Brigadier commanding the Federal troops and decided to stay there. Major sponsor of Jefferson’s reconstruction.

Partnered with John Sartoris (I) (and a third person that no one would remember) to build Jefferson’s railway in 1869. Although the two had originally been friends, their relationship quickly turned very sour, transforming into a feud, steadily fueled by reminders from Sartoris that Redmond had not fought in the Civil War. While no longer on speaking terms, they managed to agree a buy-out by Sartoris through the assistance of Judge Benbow. In August 1873, defeated by Sartoris in the election for the state legislature, backed by the success of the railway. In October that year, killed Sartoris in a duel (Sartoris did not shoot). The following day, was confronted by John’s son Bayard Sartoris (II) who did not shoot either, but this time Redmond missed. Left his office, went to the train station and took the southbound train and left Mississippi, never to return to Jefferson.

Died 1927. Husband of Reba Rivers. Landlord of her brothel from 1916 until his death.

Madam of a Memphis brothel in between at least 1909 and 1929, had hosted some of the biggest men in Memphis. Suffered from asthma, to the extent that her slightest movement appeared to be accomplished by an expenditure of breath out of all proportion to any pleasure the movement could afford her. Supported four children (not hers, though) in an Arkansas home. Temple Drake was held captive at her brothel by Popeye in 1929.

Proprietor of shop & restaurant that Raphael MacCallum and Bayard Sartoris (III) frequented in 1919.

Farmer in Jefferson in 1928.

Husband of Rachel Samson. Maried 1912. Started trading with Stuart MacCallum in 1915, having known him from boy up. Not good with names.

Wife of Mr Samson. Maried in 1912.

Born 1838–9, Carolina, died Summer 1862, Virginia. Brother of John Sartoris (I) and Virginia du Pre. Rather a handful, even for Sartorises. Not so much a black sheep as a nuisance all of whose qualities were positive and unpredictable. Aide du champs of General Jeb Stuart in the Northern Virginia Campaign, shot dead prior to the second battle of Manassas by General John Pope’s cook while trying to capture his anchovies.

Born September 1849, died c 18 December 1919. Son and middle child of John Sartoris (I) and Mrs Sartoris, brother of Miss Sartoris (I) and Miss Sartoris (II). Father of John Sartoris (II). Born in the same month as Marengo Strother, fed at the same breast (…) slept together and eaten together. Hunted possom together during Indian Summer nights. And together they shot dead with the family musket the best horse of a Federate troop that passed the Sartoris Place in July 1862. After another regiment burned down the Sartoris Place he traveled with his grandmother Rosa Millard, Marengo Strother and Joby Strother to Alabama in June 1863 to ask for compensation from Colonel Nathaniel Dick, who arranged for a requisition order signed by General Smith for 110 mules, 110 negroes, ten chests and provisions. In the following period, until October 1864, he helped his grandmother with the scheme to acquire 138 more mules through additional, forged requisition orders. After her betrayal by Ab Snopes and murder by Grumby in December 1864, he, Marengo Strother and (initially) Theophilus McCaslin pursued Grumby’s group of bandits for over two months. In late February 1865, they were confronted by the bandits, who handed over Grumby with a pistol to settle the matter. After Bayard Sartoris shot him dead, they took his body back to the abandoned cotton compress where he had killed Rosa Millard and nailed it to the door, and brought his hand to her grave in Jefferson. Studied Law in Oxford, lived with Mr Wilkins from 1870 until at least 1873. Enthralled by his father’s second wife Drusilla, and the odour of the verbena she would wear. After his father was killed by Ben J Redmond, Bayard confronted him in his office, but refusing to draw his weapon. Redmond fired twice but missed, and then left Jefferson. First Sartoris to reach beyond the age of sixty. Developed a malignant growth on his cheek, which in 1919 was diagnosed as cancer by Dr Alford when at last he consulted him at the insistance of Virginia du Pre. Died in a light car accident a week before Christmas 1919, presumably of heart failure, when his grandson Bayard (III) lost control on the icy road. His last two horses were called Roosevelt and Taft.

Born 16 March 1893, died 11 June 1920, Dayton Airfield. Son of John Sartoris (II), elder twin brother of John Sartoris (III). Father of an unnamed son with his first wife Caroline, and of Benbow Sartoris with his second wife Narcissa. Started school at seven. At some point schooled in Virginia. Went to England in 1916 to fight as a pilot in WWI. Temporarily returned to teach at a pilot school and to marry Caroline White, who died in labour along with their son. Returned from the war traumatised by the death of his brother John. Nearly died in a car accident on 3 July 1919 but saved by the boy John Henry. On 26 August 1919 married Narcissa Benbow. Had a light car accident a week before Christmas 1919 when he lost control on the icy road, in which his grandfather died of heart failure. Never returned home afterwards. After a week spent in the MacCallum household, set off for a headless trip throughout America that ended when he died on the Dayton Airfield, crash landing an experimental aircraft, on the same day that his son Benbow was born. Did not care about books. In 1919 had a pony called Perry.

Bory. Born 11 June 1920. Son of Bayard (III) and Narcissa Sartoris. Born on the day of his father’s death. Was to be named John if Virginia du Pre had had her way, and she went on to call him that anyway.

Died 27 October 1918, Sartoris Place. First wife of Bayard Sartoris (III). Died in childbirth, along with their son.

Dru. Born 1841–2. Daughter of Dennison (I) and Louisa, sister of Denison (II) Hawk, second wife of John Sartoris (I). Tomboy. Best woman rider in the country. Was to marry Gavin Breckbridge, who gifted her her horse Bobolink, but he was killed in the battle of Shiloh. When Federate troops came to Hawkhurst in early Summer of 1863 and tried to confiscate Bobolink, she managed to escape by holding it hostage, the troops proceeded to burn down the main house. In January 1864 she disappeared, only telling her family in mid December of that year that she was in Carolina, fighting with John Sartoris (I)’s regiment. She came with him to Jefferson in February 1865 and only informed her mother of her whereabouts later that Spring. Her mother was convinced and horrified that she had become Sartoris’s common-law wife, and after she too had come to the Sartoris Place later that Spring, demanded their marriage. The ceremony was delayed as John and Drusilla were busy thwarting the election of Cassius Q Benbow as Marshall of Jefferson, but afterwards, they were driven by Martha Habersham (personally) to the Minister.

Wore sprigs of verbena in her hair as she claimed it was the only scent you could smell above the smell of horses and courage. Enthralled Bayard Sartoris (II), her second nephew and son of her husband. After her husband was killed by Ben J Redmond in October 1873 and Bayard refused to shoot him, left Jefferson on the northbound train to join her brother in Montgomery. tU

Born 1823, Carolina, died October 1873, Jefferson. Brother of Bayard (I) Sartoris and Virginia Sartoris du Pre. Husband of Mrs Sartoris and Drusilla Sartoris, father of Bayard (II) Sartoris, Miss Sartoris (I) and Miss Sartoris (II) (with Mrs Sartoris). Short stature.

Moved to Jefferson in 1839, with slaves and gear and money. In Mexico in 1845, possibly fighting in the Mexican–American War.

Following the outbreak of the civil war, arranged for his daughters to stay in Memphis and raised with his own funds the 23rd infantery regiments in Mississippi (number two in the roster) that served in James Longstreet’s corps. According to Will Falls, his horse Jupiter was the best horse of the Confederacy, but one. The following year, after the second battle of Manassas, he was demoted to the rank of Major by his regiment and replaced by his second-in-command Thomas Sutpen, whom he thoroughly disliked. Amadeus McCaslin and his followers resigned in solidarity and followed him back to Mississippi. Oversaw the making and gathering of a harvest on his plantation, before he got bored and formed with McCaslin and his men an irregular cavalry unit of around one hundred, joining General Forrest in Tennessee. In the summer of 1863 narrowly managed to escape with Jupiter a Federate troop, which had been alerted to his arrival at the Sartoris Place by his slave Lucius Strother. In December 1863, informed his family that he was fighting in Carolina.

Returned to Jefferson in February 1865, together with his comrade-in-arms Drusilla Hawk. Her mother followed her that Spring to demand they marry, being convinced and horrified that she had become his common-law wife. The ceremony was delayed as he shot dead the Brothers Burden to thwart the election of Cassius Q Benbow as Marshall of Jefferson through the participation of black voters, and relocated the polling station to the Sartoris Place and appointed Drusilla as voting commissioner. Following these events, they were driven by Martha Habersham (personally) to the Minister.

Developed the idea for Jefferson’s railway, and in 1869, started construction together with the carpetbagger Ben J Redmond and General Jason Lycurgus Compson (II). The latter was bought out following a quarrel. The relationship between Sartoris and Redmond, who had initially been friends, also quickly turned very sour, transforming into a feud, steadily fueled by reminders from Sartoris that Redmond had not fought in the Civil War. While no longer on speaking terms, they managed to agree a second buy-out by Sartoris through the assistance of Judge Benbow. The first engine, which Sartoris named after his younger sister Virginia, ran into Jefferson on 9 August 1872. In August 1873, on the back of the success of the railway, Sartoris defeated Redmond in the election for the state legislature. In October, shot dead by Redmond in what may have been an ambush or a duel where he himself refused to shoot.

Died 1901. Son of Bayard Sartoris (II), husband of Lucy Sartoris, father of Bayard (III) and John (III) Sartoris. Died of yellow fever and an old Spanish bullet wound.

Born 16 March 1893, died 5 July 1918, France. Son of John Sartoris (II), younger twin brother of Bayard Sartoris (III). Started school at seven. Shot his first bear at twelve in the river bottom near MacCallum’s. Went to Princeton. Went to England in 1916 to fight in WWI. Shot down over France.

Wife of John Sartoris (II), mother of John (III) and Bayard (III) Sartoris.

Born 1847. Eldest daughter of John Sartoris (I) and Mrs Sartoris, sister of Bayard Sartoris (I) and Miss Sartoris (II). Sent to Memphis at the outbreak of the Civil War, returned afterwards. Was to be married in June 1870.

Born 1852. Youngest daughter of John Sartoris (I) and Mrs Sartoris, sister of Bayard Sartoris (I) and Miss Sartoris (I). Sent to Memphis at the outbreak of the Civil War, returned afterwards.

Died September 1849. Daughter of Rosa Millard, first wife of John Sartoris (I), mother of Miss Sartoris (I), Bayard Sartoris (II) and Miss Sartoris (II). Died while giving birth to Bayard Sartoris (II).

Born 1892–3. Daughter of Will and Julia Benbow. Sister of Horace Benbow, although their relationship was at times more like husband and wife. Piano player. Friend of Virginia du Pre, and through her made the acquaintance of her future husband, Virginia’s great-grandnephew Bayard Sartoris (III), whom she had known all her life but with whom she had spoken less than four words before his return from WWI. They married on 26 August 1919 and she gave birth to their son Benbow Sartoris on 5 June 1920, the day of Bayard’s death, although he had already deserted her in December 1919.

Continued living at the Sartoris Place, where throughout the years she received several suitors, including Herschell Jones (until Spring 1928) and Gowan Stevens (Spring 1928 – May 1929). Turned down a proposal by Gowan Stevens in May 1929 because one child was enough for her.

Aunt Jenny. Born 1838–9, Carolina, died after 1929. Youngest sister of John (I) and Bayard (I) Sartoris. Danced a valse with General Jeb Stuart in Baltimore in 1858. Married Mr du Pre in 1860 (at 21), widowed exactly two years later. Joined John Sartoris (I)’s family in Jefferson in January 1867. Started the garden of the recently rebuilt Sartoris Place, having brought calycanthus and jasmine with her from Carolina. John named Jefferson’s first train engine after her and had her name engraved on a silver oil can in the cab.

On Confederate Decoration Day 1900, unveiled the marble war monument depicting a Confederate infantryman on Jefferson’s town square, initiated and financed by the United Daughters of the Confederation.

Survived all of John (I), John (II), Bayard (I), Bayard (II) and Bayard (III) Sartoris, living together with Bayard (III)’s widow Narcissa (already her friend before the marriage) and their son Benbow from 1920 onwards. Had a mild stroke in 1924, since then spent her days in a wheelchair beside a window....

From St Louis. Undersized. Preached in a Jefferson black church service on Easter 1928 (8 April) that Dilsey Gibson, Frony, Luster and Maury Compson attended.

Had the key to the old opera house in Jefferson in 1928.

Operator of the switchboard at Dr Brandt’s specialist clinic in Memphis on 9 July 1919.

Lived in a cabin in the hills, together with a woman. Asked by John Sartoris (I) to look out for his family, after a Federate regiment had burnt down the main building of the Sartoris Place in 1863. Between August 1863 and October 1864, helped Rosa Millard con Federate regiments to obtain mules using requisition orders faked by Marengo Strother, and in particular sold them back for her to different Federate troops, for a grand total of 6724 dollars. Then sold her whereabouts to one of the regiments they had previously conned, who confiscated their remaining mules. Then, in December 1864, convinced Mrs Millard to go to the abandoned cotton compress where the group of bandits known as Grumby’s independents was stationed, to try to requisition their four horses with a forged order from General Nathan Bedford Forrest, after he had already done so himself. Grumby panicked and killed Millard, and the group was pursued by Bayard Sartoris (II), Marengo Strother and Theopihilus McCaslin. After gang member Matt Bowden discovered that they were after Snopes in particular, they left him tied to a tree. He was subsequently taken back to Jefferson by McCaslin.

Bookkeeper at the Sartoris bank in 1919. Author of anonymous propositional letters to Narcissa Benbow, which he dictated to Virgil Beard. Lived at the Beard Hotel until June 1919, when he became so haunted by the presence of Virgil Beard that he went to live with his cousin I. O. Snopes.

Son of I. O. Snopes. In June 1929 Mississippi state Senator for Jefferson. Sold first to Horace Benbow, then to Mr Drake, the information that Temple Drake was being held in Reba Rivers’s Memphis brothel, which was finally also beat out of him by a Memphis lawyer working for Eustace Graham.

‘The first Snopes’ in Jefferson and something of a patron for the extended members of his family that followed from Frenchman’s Bend. During the first few months after coming to Jefferson, stayed with his wife and baby in a tent at a restaurant, which he later came to own. Eventually became manager of the Jefferson light and water plant, and since 1916 Vice President of the Sartoris bank. In 1902 imported a herd of Texas ponies, which he auctioned off for two dollars a head and nobody but old Lon Quick ever caught his.

Father of Clarence Snopes, cousin of Byron Snopes. In 1919 proprietor of a small restaurant, living near the Jefferson railway station. In 1928 part of a group of men who bet on the cotton market.

Born 1896. Volunteered to fight in WWI in 1917 but turned down on account of his heart. Then travelled to Europe anyway joining the YMCA, together with Horace Benbow, but did not return.

Nephew of Flem Snopes. Farmer near Frenchman’s Bend in 1927, on the north side of the river. Owned three-four spans of mules.

Came with Fonzo to Memphis in May 1929, to do business for a month or so at the barber college. Stayed at Reba Rivers’s brothel, mistaking it for a cheap hotel.

Sheriff in Jefferson in 1869. Came to Sutpen’s Hundred in the evening of 12 August 1869 after Wash Jones’s murder of Thomas Sutpen, unable to prevent him from also killing his granddaughter Milly Jones and the daughter she had given birth to that morning.

Born late 1830 or early 1831. Eldest child of Gowan and Temple Stevens.

Born c 1886. Husband of Maggie Stevens, uncle of Gowan Stevens. Lawyer. County amateur Cincinnatus. Educated at Harvard and Heidelberg. Country Attorney. Champion not so much of truth as of justice, or of justice as he sees it, constantly involving himself, often for no pay, in affairs of equity and passion and even crime too among his people, white and Negro both, sometimes directly contrary to his office.

Unsuccessfully defended Nancy Mannigoe in November 1836 in her trial for the murder of Gowan and Temple Stevens’s daugher, but in March 1837 succeeded in getting Temple Stevens to confess the full circumstances that led Mannigoe to her act. While Mannigoe was in prison, sang church hymns with her on Sunday nights and on all but one of the nights in the last week before her execution.

Born 1908–9. Single child of financially secure parents. Nephew of Gavin Stevens. Husband of Temple and father of Bucky Stevens and an unnamed girl. Attended the University of Virginia from 1926 to 1929, where, despite his protestations, he did not learn to drink like a gentleman.

Suitor of Narcissa Sartoris from the spring of 1928 until May 1929, when he unsuccessfully proposed to her. Simultaneously dated Temple Drake from at least October 1928. In May 1929, became stranded with Temple at the Old Frenchman Place after crashing his car, where he had been meaning to buy more alcohol, having been a customer of Lee Goodwin since 1926, choosing, despite Temple’s pleas, to stay there and to again get drunk, leading to the murder of Goodwin’s associate Tommy and her rape by Popeye, and her continued imprisonment and rape over the course of the following month by Red in Reba Rivers’s Memphis whore house.

Quit drinking. Dropped out of university without graduating and married Temple Drake the following Winter at the American embassy in Paris, where she had been staying, with a reception at the Crillon and a honeymoon at a rented hideaway built for his European mistress by a Mohammedan prince at Cap Ferrat. Once back in Mississippi, moved into a new bungalow in Jefferson.

The couple had a son, Bucky, in early 1931, whose paternity he soon began to doubt, and a daughter in March 1936. The daughter was murdered on 13 September by their nurse Nancy Mannigoe in a desperate attempt to stop Temple from eloping with Red’s brother Pete, so Bucky would not remain behind alone with him.

Wife of Gavin Stevens.

Born May–June 1912, Jackson. Daughter of Mr Drake. Wife of Gowan Stevens, mother of Bucky Stevens and a younger daughter. Student at the Mississippi State University in Oxford in early 1929, and seeing Gowan Stevens. Became an unintentional guest at the Old Frenchman Place when on 11 May 1929 Gowan’s car broke down; raped there the following day with a corn cob by Popeye Vitelli and witnessed his murder of Tommy, who had tried to protect her. Subsequently taken to Reba Rivers’s Memphis brothel. Held there during the next six weeks, forced to have sex with Vitelli’s associate Red so Vitelli could watch the act. Fell in love with Red, writing him saucy letters, until Red was shot dead by Vitelli on 17 June when he attempted to visit her in private. Released from captivity by Vitelli to falsely identify Lee Goodwin as her rapist and Tommy’s murderer in court on 21 June, leading to his conviction and lynching.

Spent the rest of 1929 in Paris. Married Gowan Stevens that Winter at the American embassy, with a reception at the Crillon and a honeymoon at a rented hideaway built for his European mistress by a Mohammedan prince at Cap Ferrat. Once back in Mississippi, moved into a new bungalow in Jefferson.

Gave birth to their son, Bucky, in early 1931 and took on thereformed dope-fiend Nancy Mannigoe as a nurse to have someone to talk to with similar experiences. Gave birth to a girl in March 1936.

In the Summer of 1936, Red’s brother Pete attempted to blackmail her over her letters to Red, but she fell in love with him, writing him more saucy letters. Planned to elope with him on 13 September, unhindered by Mannigoe’s attempt to stop her by hiding her valuables and unconvinced by her pleas to remain in order to protect the children. Finally thwarted when, out of desperation, Mannigoe smothered the daughter, sacrificing her for the sake of Bucky.

Wife of Simon Strother, mother of Elnora and Caspey Strother.

Husband of Louvinia Strother, father of Lucius and Simon (I) Strother. Grandfather of Simon Strother (II). Slave and body servant to John Sartoris (I), followed him from Carolina to the Sartoris Place in Mississippi.

Wife of Joby Strother, mother of Lucius and Simon (I) Strother, grandmother of Simon Strother (II). Slave then servant at the Sartoris Place.

Loosh. Son of Joby Strother, brother of Simon Strother (I), husband of Philadelphy Strother. Slave, then servant at the Sartoris Place. His head resembled a cannon ball. In 1863, alerted a Federate troop to the arrival of John Sartoris at the Sartoris Place, as well as to the family silver buried in the garden, allowing him and his wife to pursue the promise of freedom. Returned to the Sartoris Place some time after the end of the war.

Ringo. Born September 1949. Son of Simon Strother (I). Slave, then servant at the Sartoris place. Born in the same month as Bayard Sartoris (II), fed at the same breast, (…) slept together and eaten together for so long ” that he too called Rosa Millard granny. And together they shot dead with the family musket the best horse of a Federate troop that passed the Sartoris Place in the Summer of 1862. Although he was always a little bit smarter than Bayard, that was never an issue.

After another troop had burned down the Sartoris place, confiscated their two mules and taken the family silver, he, Bayard Sartoris and Joby Strother accompanied Rosa Millard to Alabama in June 1863 where they obtained a requisition order from General Andrew Jackason Smith for 110 mules, 110 negroes, ten chests and provisions. During the following year, until October 1864, he scouted out Federate army regiments and tailor-forged additional requisition orders, with which they conned the regiments to obtain 148 more mules. At the same time, he helped Rosa Millard with the meticulously controlled distribution of the proceeds to members of the local church. After her betrayal by Ab Snopes and murder by Grumby in December 1864, he, Bayard Sartoris and (initially) Theophilus McCaslin pursued Grumby’s group of bandits for over two months. In late February 1865, they were confronted by the bandits, who handed over Grumby with a pistol to settle the matter. After Bayard Sartoris shot him dead, they took his body back to the abandoned cotton compress where he had killed Rosa Millard, nailing it to the door, and his hand to her grave in Jefferson.

Wife of Lucius Strother. Slave at the Sartoris place. Followed her husband to pursue the promise of freedom in 1863, even though she admitted she knew they would be worse off.

Son of Joby and Louvinia Strother, brother of Lucius Strother, father of Marengo Strother. Slave at the Sartoris place. Succeeded his father as body servant of John Sartoris (I), accompanying him into the civil war. Stayed behind in Tennessee when John Sartoris was deposed by his own regiment and temporarily returned to Mississippi, but they were later rejoined and returned together at the end of the war.

Born 1859–1860, died June 1920, Jefferson. Son of Simon (I) or Lucius Strother. Wife of Euphrony Strother, father of Elnora and Caspey. Driver and servant at the Sartoris Place. Deacon in the local baptist church. Lost 67.40 dollar he had been entrusted as treasurer for the to be established second baptist church, in all likelihood spent on Meloney, in whose house he was found with a smashed-in head.

Cavalry leader of General Lee, rode with Bayard Sartoris (I) in Virginia.

Lived with Turpin about half an hour’s ride outside Frenchman’s bend. Friend of Byron Snopes, with marriage at least at one point a possibility.

Grandfather of VK Suratt. His leg was amputated by Lucius (I) Peabody while he laid back on the kitchen table with a demijohn in his hand and a mattress and a cheer acrost his laigs and fo’ men a-holdin’ him down, and him cussin’ and singin’ so scandalous the women-folks and the chillen went down to the pasture behind the barn and waited.

Grandson of Mr Suratt. In 1919, worked as a sewing machine agent. Knew nearly every soul in the county. Offered to drive Bayard Sartoris (III) home after his attempt to ride a wild stallion ended in a crash and unconsciousness — a ride that turned into a wild drinking bout. By 1927 was selling talking machines.

Clytie. Born 1834, Sutpen’s Hundred, died December 1909, Sutpen’s Hundred. Daughter of Thomas Sutpen and an unnamed slave. In her childhood, slept in the same room as her younger half-sister Judith, sleeping on a pallet, although Judith would often come down and she at least on one occasion slept with Judith in the bed.

Had never travelled farther than Jefferson until in December 1871 she travelled to New Orleans to collect Charles (II) Etienne Saint-Valery Bon after the disappearance of his mother. After Judith’s death in 1884, used the next twelve years to raise Charles (II)’s son Jim Bond and scrimped and saved the money to pay off the second part of Judith’s debt to Jason (II) Lycurgus Compson for Charles (I)’s headstone, and when he tried to refuse it, she set the rusty can full of nickels and dimes and frayed paper money on the desk and walked out of the office without a word.

From late 1905 looked after Henry who had returned to Sutpen’s Hundred. Unsuccessfully tried to prevent Rosa Coldfield from discovering his presence in September 1909. In December, set fire to the main house after Rosa had come with an ambulance to pick up Henry, fearing he might be arrested for Charles (I)’s murder. The fire killed both Henry and herself.

Born 9 October 1817, Tennessee, died 23 January 1863, Sutpen’s Hundred. Daughter of Goodhue and Mrs Coldfield, wife of Thomas Sutpen, mother of Henry and Ellen Sutpen.

Her family moved to Jefferson in 1828. Married Thomas Sutpen in June 1838, swayed, according to her sister Rosa Coldfield, by just his face, because she was a blind romantic fool who had only youth and inexperience to excuse her even if that. Gave birth without gentleness to their son Henry in 1839 and their daughter Judith in 1841.

If she had had the fortitude to bear sorrow and trouble, might have risen to actual stardom in the role of the matriarch arbitrating from the fireside corner of a crone the pride and destiny of her family.

Over the course of 1860, engineered an undefined and never-spoken engagement between Julia and Charles (I) Bon, unaware that he was her half-brother. Took to bed on Christmas day and remained there after the engagement was forbidden by her husband and Henry repudiated his birthright. Died two years later. First person to be buried in the graveyard of Sutpen’s Hundred.

Born Haiti, died 1861–2, New Orleans. Only child of a Haitian sugar planter of French descent and a mixed race mother who was said to be Spanish. Married Thomas Sutpen in 1827, after he had broken a siege by slaves of the plantation house. Gave birth to their son Charles in 1831, whereupon he discovered that she had negro blood and divorced her, leaving her with the entirety of their possessions. Moved with her son to New Orleans, enlisting a lawyer to administer her wealth and act as a steward for her son, hoping to groom him into a tool of revenge against Thomas Sutpen, without knowing exactly how. Disappeared in 1861 or early 1862, possibly murdered by the lawyer who had fled with her remaining wealth.

Born 1839, Sutpen’s Hundred, died December 1909, Sutpen’s Hundred. Son of Thomas and Ellen Sutpen. Had with his sister Judith a relationship closer than the traditional loyalty of brother and sister even; a curious relationship: something of that fierce impersonal rivalry between two cadets in a crack regiment who eat from the same dish and sleep under the same blanket and chance the same destruction and who would risk death for one another not for the other’s sake but for the sake of the unbroken front of the regiment itself.

In his youth, his entire cosmopolitan experience consisted probably of one or two trips to Memphis with his father to buy live stock or slaves, of sojourns at other houses, plantations, almost interchangeable with his own, where he followed the same routine which he did at home — the same hunting and cockfighting, the same amateur racing of horses on crude homemade tracks, horses sound enough in blood and lineage yet not bred to race and perhaps not even thirty minutes out of the shafts of a trap or perhaps even a carriage; the same square dancing with identical and also interchangeable provincial virgins, to music exactly like that at home, the same champagne, the best doubtless yet crudely dispensed out of the burlesqued pantomime elegance of negro butlers who (and likewise the drinkers who gulped it down like neat whiskey between flowery and unsubtle toasts) would have treated lemonade the same way.

In 1859, Started attending the University of Mississippi in Oxford. Fell under the spell of Charles (I) Bon, imitating his dress and speech and switching to law mid-term. Invited Charles home to Sutpen’s Hundred that Christmas and introduced him to his sister Judith, not knowing that he was their half-brother. Repudiated his birthright when on Christmas eve 1860, their father Thomas Sutpen forbade an engagement between Charles and Judith, revealing Charles’s identity. With Charles in tow, rode through the bright cold of that Christmas day to the River, from where they took the steamboat to New Orleans. Confronted Charles, who refused to renounce the engagement until their father confronted himself.

In the spring of 1861 they returned north, into Mississippi, secretely enrolled as privates in the University Grays Company of the 11th Mississippi Infantry and hid, and only joined the company after it departed in June. In April 1862, either he or Charles was shot through the shoulder during the battle of Shiloh at Pittsburg Landing, carried to safety by the other on his shoulders, and recovered in a private house in Corinth, apparently for the sole purpose of being watched for two years more. Otherwise, the war failed to settle the matter by killing either of them.

Then finally, in March 1865, while retreating through Carolina, Charles decided to write to Judith, which he grudgingly accepted. He was then told by his father that Charles was of mixed race descent, instilling him with renewed rejection. He still refused to stop Charles with force, until finally on 3 May 1865, upon their return from the war, he shot Charles dead at the gates of Sutpen’s Hundred.

In late 1905 returned to Sutpen’s Hundred to die. Hid there, looked after by his half-sister Clytemnestra, until in December 1909 he died in the fire started by Clytemnestra when Rosa Coldfield came to pick him up with an ambulance.

Born 3 October 1841, Sutpen’s Hundred, died 12 February 1884, Sutpen’s Hundred. Daughter of Thomas and Ellen Coldfield Sutpen. In her childhood, slept in the same room as her elder half-sister Clytemnestra, often coming down to her pallet, and at least on one occasion letting her sleep in her bed. Had with her brother Henry a relationship closer than the traditional loyalty of brother and sister even; a curious relationship: something of that fierce impersonal rivalry between two cadets in a crack regiment who eat from the same dish and sleep under the same blanket and chance the same destruction and who would risk death for one another not for the other’s sake but for the sake of the unbroken front of the regiment itself.

At Christmas 1859, was introduced to her brother’s friend Charles (I) Bon, unaware that he was their half-brother from her father’s first marriage. Over the course of the following year, entered into an undefined and never-spoken engagement with Charles, engineered by her mother. This engagement was forbidden the following Christmas Eve by their father Thomas Sutpen, who had traveled to New Orleans and confirmed his identity.

Save for a single letter in March 1865, had no more contact with Charles as he and Henry left to fight in the Civil War and Henry killed Charles upon their return in May 1865.

After her father’s death in August 1869, buried him in the graveyard of Sutpen’s Hundred. Continued his crossroads store until, in 1870, she managed to sell it with the help of Jason Lycurgus Compson (II), using the proceeds to buy a headstone for Charles. In December 1871, sent her half-sister Clytemnestra to New Orleans to fetch Charles’s son Charles (II) Etienne Saint-Valery Bon, and made a down payment of 100 dollar to Jason (II) Lycurgus Compson for a future headstone for him.

In January 1884 took Charles (II) into the main house at Sutpen’s Hundred to nurse his Yellow Fewer. Contracted the disease herself and died before him.

Suffered the Indignities and Travails of this World for 42 Years, 4 Months, 9 Days.

Fourth person to be buried in the graveyard of Sutpen’s Hundred. Whoever buried her must have been afraid that the other dead would contract the disease from her, since her grave was at the opposite side of the enclosure, as far from the other four as the enclosure would permit. Her headstone was arranged for by her aunt Rosa Coldfield.

Born 1807, West Virginia mountains, died 12 August 1869, Sutpen’s Hundred. Husband first of Eulalia and later of Ellen Coldfield. Father of Charles Bon (with Eulalia), Clytemnestra (with an unnamed slave), Henry and Judith (with Ellen) and an unnamed girl (with Milly Jones).

Born into a large Methodist family of poor white Scotch-English stock. His mother was a mountain woman, a Scottish woman who .. never did quite learn to speak English.

In 1817, at the age of ten, over the course of perhaps a year, moved with his family down into Tidewater Virginia. Learned the difference not only between white men and black ones, but he was learning that there was a difference between white men and white men not to be measured by lifting anvils or gouging eyes or how much whiskey you could drink then get up and walk out of the room.

At thirteen or fourteen, sent by his father to a one-room country school for about three months one winter, in a room full of children three or four years younger than he and three or four years further advanced. Had not learned to read his own name at the end of the Winter.

Ran away from home in 1820, at fourteen, after being told by a slave to only approach the house of a plantation owner at the back entrance, leaving him unable to fulfill his errant. This set in motion a train of thought culminating in his becoming aware of and thereby losing his innocence, and the realisation that to combat all the human puny mortals under the sun that might lie in hammocks all afternoon with their shoes off, you got to have land and niggers and a fine house to combat them with. Set about for the rest of his life to fulfil this design.

Subsequently embarked as a sailor to the West Indies, to which he had learned in school poor men went in ships and became rich, it didn’t matter how, so long as that man was clever and courageous. In the course of the following six years, settled on Haiti, where high mortality was concomitant with the money and the sheen on the dollars was not from gold but from blood, and where he became overseer or foreman or something to a French sugar planter and learned Patois and French.

In 1826 or 1827, broke an eight-day siege of the plantation house by the plantation’s slaves when the house ran out of water on the eighth night, but was severely injured in the process. Not able to bear sugar since due to the rank sweet rich smell of the burning fields. Married the planter’s daughter Eulalia in 1827, after he had recovered. A virgin until that time. Renounced her and their son, when, upon his birth in 1831, he found out that she had negro blood. Nonetheless chose both a first and a last name for him: Charles Bon.

Seeking some place to hide himself, came to Jefferson on a Sunday in June of 1833, bringing with him twenty to thirty male Caribbean slaves and a captive Parisian architect. Sought the guarantee of reputable men to barricade him from the other and later strangers who might come seeking him in turn, and Jefferson gave him that. In July 1833 contributed the labour of his slaves to the construction of Jefferson’s improvised first courthouse.

Initially penniless, obtained money from an unknown source and took land from the Chickasaw nobody knows how, establishing the plantation of Sutpen’s Hundred. Jason Lycurgus Compson (II) lent him the seeds with which he started his plantation, and he became the nearest thing to a friend he ever had in Yoknapatawpha County and this friendship may have helped him to gain a foothold.

Spent the first two years building a big house following the design of his architect. In the Summer of 1834, when they had finished all the brick and had the foundations laid and most of the big timbers cut and trimmed, the architect made one unsuccessful attempt to escape into the river bottom, disappearing in broad daylight. Led a search party in his pursuit that consisted of his slaves, dogs and a number of neighbours including Jason (II) Lycurgus Compson. Ran down the architect in the late afternoon of the third day, more than thirteen miles from the house.

Beginning in 1834, also let the architect oversee the construction of Jefferson’s town square, new courthouse and refurbished jail. Became father of Clytemnestra with a slave in 1834. In 1835, his residence was completed save for the windowglass and the ironware which they could not make by hand, and he paid some compensation to the architect and let him leave.

Then he needed respectability, the shield of a virtuous woman, to make his position impregnable even against the men who had given him protection, and it was Goodhue Coldfield who gave him that. Married his daughter Ellen Coldfield in June 1838. She came not from one of the local ducal houses but from the lesser baronage whose principality was so far decayed that there would be no risk of his wife bringing him for dowry delusions of grandeur before he should be equipped for it yet not so far decayed but that she might keep them both from getting lost among the new knives and forks and spoons that he had bought Became father of a son Henry with her in 1839 and of a daughter Judith in 1841.

Still invited parties of men for hunting, playing cards, drinking and organised fights between his slaves, in which he himself would occasionally participate at the end of an evening.

By 1848, had got his plantation to running smoothly and had employed as his overseer the son of the same sheriff who had arrested him on the day of his betrothal. By the time of the Civil War, had become the biggest single landowner and cotton-planter in the county, through a singleminded unflagging effort and utter disregard of for his actions which the town could see might look and how the indicated one’s which the town could not see must appear to it. He was not liked (which he evidently did not want anyway) but feared, which seemed to amuse, if not actually please, him.

At Christmas 1859, his son Henry brought home Charles, whom he had become friends with at university, and introduced Judith to Charles, unaware that he was their half-brother. As they entered into an undefined and never-spoken engagement engineered by their mother, he went to New Orleans in June to confirm Charles’s identity. At Christmas, he confronted Henry about Charles and forbade the engagement, prompting his son to refuse to believe him and relinquish his birth-right.

In the spring of 1861, after the outbreak of the Civil War, departed with the 23rd Mississippi Infantry. Major and second-in-command in John (I) Sartoris’s regiment, who thoroughly disliked him, in James Longstreet’s corps. Following the second battle of Manassas, the regiment elected him as their new leader, promoting him to the rank of Colonel and demoting Sartoris.

In the summer of 1863, his regiment was in Virginia and he got word from Judith of the death of Ellen. He ordered a pair of tombstones from Italy, the best, the finest to be had — his wife’s complete and his with the date left blank: and this while for all he could know, before his order could be filled or even received he might be already under ground and his grave marked (if at all) by a shattered musket thrust into the earth, or lacking that he might be a second lieutenant or even a private yet he not only ordered the stones and managed to pay for them, but stranger still he managed to get them past a seacoast so closely blockaded that the incoming runners refused any cargo except ammunition and for the next year the stones were to be a part of the regiment, to follow it into Pennsylvania and be present at Gettysburg, moving behind the regiment in a wagon driven by his body servant through swamp and plain and mountain pass, the regiment moving no faster than the wagon could, with starved gaut men and gaunt spent horses knee deep in icy mud or snow, sweating and cursing it through bog and morass like a piece of artillery, speaking of the two stones as ‘Colonel’ and ‘Mrs Colonel’; then through the Cumberland Gap and down through the Tennessee mountains, travelling at night to dodge Yankee patrols, and into Mississippi in the late fall of ‘64, to Sutpen’s Hundred, where he put one of the stones over his wife’s grave and set the other upright in the hall of the house and drank the parched corn coffee and ate the hoe cake which Judith and Clytie prepared for him and kissed Judith on the forehead and said ‘Well, Clytie’ and returned to the war, all in twenty-four hours.

In March 1865, while retreating through Carolina, confronted Henry again, who had then grudgingly accepted that Charles continued the engagement with Judith. Unable to dissuade Henry, revealed to him that Charles was of mixed race descent, which succeeded in leading Henry to shoot Charles dead upon their return from the war.

Returned home in January 1866, finding Sutpen’s Hundred destroyed. In March, refused to join Sartoris’s group of nightriders which aimed to thwart the organisation of the black vote. In April, became engaged with Ellen’s sister Rosa Coldfield, who had come to Sutpen’s Hundred the previous year, but in June she broke off the engagement and moved back to Jefferson after he proposed that they conceive a child and only marry if it turned out to be a boy.

Attempted to rebuild Sutpen’s Hundred without help from anyone but had to relinquish most of it, as he realised that what he had left of it would never support him and his family and so running his little crossroads store with a stock of plowshares and hame strings and calico and kerosene and cheap beads and ribbons and a clientele of freed niggers and white trash.

In 1867 started a relationship with Milly Jones, the fourteen-year-old granddaughter of his associate Wash Jones. On 12 August 1869, she gave birth to an unnamed girl, whereupon Wash Jones killed him with a scythe. Buried by his daughter Judith in the graveyard of Sutpen’s Hundred.

Proud man, but not a gentleman: didn’t want to be one, or even be taken for one. It was said that he not only went out to meet his troubles, he sometimes went out and manufactured them.

Born 12 August 1869, Sutpen’s Hundred, died 12 August 1869, Sutpen’s Hundred. Illegitimate daughter of Thomas Sutpen and Milly Jones. Killed, along with her parents, on the day of her birth, by her great-grandfather Wash Jones.

Owner of a farmers’ supply store in Jefferson from at least 1916 until at least 1928 and employer of Jason Compson IV and Job.

Husband of Mrs Tubbs. Jailor at Jefferson prison in 1937. Typical small-town turnkey.

Wife of Mr Tubbs.

Born Alabama. Wife of Vernon Tull, mother of Eula and Kate Tull. Considered herself more blessed than most in her husband and children, trials though they were at times.

Friend of Addie Bundren. Regularly visited to attend her deathbed over the course of three weeks in July 1927, so that somebody would be with her in her last moments and she would not have to face the Great Unknown without one familiar face to give her courage. Expected the same for herself.

Tried to live right in the sight of God and man, for the honour and comfort of her Christian husband and the love and respect of her Christian children. So that when she would lay her down in the consciousness of her duty and reward she would be surrounded by loving faces, carrying the farewell kiss of each of her loved ones into her reward.

Daughter of Vernon and Cora Tull, elder sister of Kate Tull.

Lived with his family 2 miles from Old Frenchman Place in 1929.

Mother of Vernon Tull. Lived to be seventy and more. Worked every day, rain or shine; never a sick day since her last chap was born until one day she kind of looked around her and then she went and taken that lace-trimmed night-gown she had had forty-five years and never wore out of the chest and put it on and laid down on the bed and pulled the covers up and shut her eyes. You all will have to look out for pa the best you can, she said. I’m tired.

Husband of Cora Tull, father of Eula and Kate Tull. Farmer. Cut a sight of timber down by the Yoknapatawpha River in 1925, reportedly to pay off a mortgage. Always got the most for his money. By 1929 owned a telephone and a car.

Jefferson resident, rented out a piece of land to a visiting show in 1928.

Daughter of Mr Turpin. Lived with him about half an hour’s ride outside Frenchman’s bend. Friend of Byron Snopes, with marriage at least at one point a possibility.

Father of Minnie Sue Turpin. Lived about half an hour’s ride outside Frenchman’s Bend in 1919.

Father of Jody Varner and many other children. Proprietor of a store in Frenchman’s Bend in 1919. Also worked as a horse physician. Set Cash Bundren’s broken leg in June 1927, seeing that a man aint so different from a horse or a mule, come long come short, except a mule or a horse has got a little more sense.

Born 1888. Eldest child of Bill Varner.

Died after 1929. Mother of Popeye. Lived in Pensacola, as the daughter of a boarding house keeper. Her first husband was a strike breaker who left her before Popeye’s birth. Her second husband left her robbing her of her fourteen hundred dollar in savings. Her mother perished in a house fire she herself had started (after three earlier such attempts) when Popeye was three, causing her to break down mentally. She was thereafter supported by Popeye’s foster family, even after he was put into a home for incorrigible children. Believed Popeye to earn his living as a night clerk. Survived him.

Born 25 December 1900, Pensacola, died August 1929, Birmingham. Born without eyelids, impotent and allergic to alcohol, which in his own words made him sick to his stomach like a dog. Did not learn to walk and talk until he was four, did not gain hair until five. Injured at age three in a house fire started by his grandmother. Thereafter cared for by doctors and — in the afternoons and on holidays — by a foster family, until he was sent to a home for incorrigible children upon cutting up alive first a pair of lovebirds and three months later a kitten. Released after five years of impeccable behaviour. Then moved to Mobile, New Orleans and finally Memphis, telling his mother that he was a night clerk, but in fact becoming rich trafficking liquor.

In the years leading up till 1929 joined Lee Goodwin at Old Frenchman Place, shipping liquor from Goodwin’s still back to Memphis.

On 12 May 1929, raped Temple Drake — who had become marooned at the Old Frenchman Place the previous day — with a corn cob, and killed Goodwin’s associate Tommy, who had attempted to protect her. Subsequently detained her in Reba Rivers’s Memphis brothel, repeatedly pimping her to Red, a bouncer at his night club, himself watching the act. Killed Red on 17 June in Joe’s dancing venue. Arrested in Birmingham, on his way to his mother, for the unrelated murder of a policeman in an Alabama village also on 17 June. Wrongfully convicted and hanged in August.

Generally called people Jack.

Matron (?) at the Jefferson jail in 1929.

Member of John Sartoris (I)’s troop during the Civil War. Jefferson resident in 1873.

Father of Jewel Bundren. Lived near Frenchman Bend, on the north side of the river. A godly man if ever one breathed God’s breath. C 1908 had an affair with Addie Bundren, out of which Jewel Bundren was born, who was raised as Anse Bundren’s son. Upon hearing that she lay dying in June 1927, fearing she might reveal the affair on her deathbed, rushed to her house to pre-empt the confession, braving the high waters of the Yoknapatawpha which had flooded Tull’s Bridge. Arrived at the house finding her dead already. Chose to interpret this as God’s mercy, Who accepted the will for the deed, Who knew that when he framed the words of his confession it was to Anse he spoke them, even though he was not there. It was He in His infinite wisdom that restrained the tale from her dying lips as she lay surrounded by those who loved and trusted her.

Jefferson resident whose cabin was used for church services in 1833, before the town had a proper church.

Husband of Mrs Wilkins, father of Mr Wilkins (II). Judge and Oxford College Professor with whom Bayard Sartoris (II) lived from 1870 and 1873.

Born c 1840, died 1864. Son of Mr (I) and Mrs Wilkins, killed in one of the last battles of the Civil War.

Wife of Oxford college Professor Mr Wilkins (I), mother of Mr Wilkins (II). Bayard Sartoris (II) lived with them from 1870 until 1873. Had known Rosa Millard.

Colonel in the 11th Mississippi regiment in March 1865.

Lodged two Missouri men in 1872 who were shot dead by John Sartoris (I).

Doctor. Episcopalian minister in Jefferson up until the civil war.

Bet on the cotton market in Jefferson in 1928.

Captain in General Jeb Stuart’s regiment in 1862, participated in the raid on General John Pope’s breakfast table.

Member of John Sartoris (I)’s troop and close to him until his death in October 1873. Helped him thwart the election of Cassius Q Benbow as Jefferson’s Marshall in 1865. Eager for Sartoris’s killing by Ben J Redmond to be avenged.

Aunt Sally. Born c 1848–52. Younger sister of Sophia Wyatt, elder sister of an unnamed sister. Next-but-one-door neighbour (together with her sisters) of Horace and Narcissa Benbow and implicit member of the Benbow household. Said to have at one time ‘made eyes’ at Will Benbow, their father. Moved in with Narcissa while Horace was in Europe during WWI (1917-19), but forced to move back with her sisters afterwards, who gave her a hard time.

Eldest sister of three, including Sally Wyatt, who were next-to-one-door neighbours of Horace and Narcissa Benbow in the 1910s.

Captain in General Jeb Stuart’s regiment in 1862, participated in the raid on General John Pope’s breakfast table.

Coon hunter in Jefferson in 1833.

Employee in Mr Moseley’s Mottson drugstore in 1927.

Aide du champs of General Jeb Stuart in Virginia 1862, participated in the raid on General John Pope’s breakfast table.

Marshall near Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1910. Arrested Quentin Compson (III) on the day of his suicide, after Julio accused him of attempting to abduct his daughter.

Member of the group of bandits known as Grumby’s independents. Helped Matt Bowden turn over Grumby to Bayard Sartoris (II) and Marengo Strother in February 1865. The group planned to escape to Texas.

Marshal in Jefferson in 1919.

Son of Simon, sister of Elnora. Went out hunting with Bayard (III) and John (III) Sartoris from the moment they first got a gun. Fought in WWI.

One-time boyfriend of Candace Compton.

Servant at the Compson Place

Train porter at Harvard. Hadn’t (in 1910) missed a train at the beginning of school in forty years, was able to pick out southern boys on sight and to tell their state once he’d heard them speak. Had come to believe in the story (telling all the corresponding tales) that he was a divinity graduate. Participated in all parades.

Oxford youth in May 1929, one of three who received a ride from Gowan Stevens and went drinking with him.

Officer at the Jefferson jail in 1929 (possibly Sheriff).

Servant and cook at the Sartoris Place. Daughter of Simon, sister of Caspey, mother of Isom, Saturday and Sunday.

Cook in the Benbow household in 1919.

Came with Virgil Snopes to Memphis in May 1929 (never having been there before), to do business for a month or so at the barber college. Stayed at Reba Rivers’s brothel, mistaking it for a cheap hotel.

One time beau of Ruby Goodwin. Shot by her father because he refused to stop seeing her.

Born 1901–2. Friend of Belle Mitchell (I), played tennis. First woman in Jefferson to wear her hair in a bob.

Second (?) child of Roskus and Dilsey Gibson. Mother of Luster. Married a pullman porter and went to St Louis to live in 1910 or earlier. After Jason Compson (IV) sold the house after Caroline Compson’s death in 1933, moved back to Memphis to make a home for her mother since Dilsey refused to go further than that.

Bootlegger. Payed for the punch at Red’s funeral in June 1929. Claimed that Red never had a better friend than him.

Porter at the Holly Springs railway station in 1929.

Died February 1865. Former Confederate soldier, leader of a group of 50 to 60 fighters called Grumby’s independents that sprang up as soon as Federate forces had left Mississippi. They killed a black man and burned him in his cabin, tortured others and raided smokehouses, stables and houses where they were sure there were no men. Based in an abandoned cotton compress on the Tallahatchie River, sixty miles from the Sartoris Place. They were captured once by a group of old men, on which occasion Grumby produced a tattered raiding commission actually signed by General Forrest; though you couldn’t tell if the original name was Grumby or not.

When Rosa Millard, set up by Ab Snopes, came to the cotton compress in December 1864 to try to requisition their four horses with a forged order from General Forrest, after Snopes had already done so himself, he panicked and killed her, but scruples prevented him from also killing fifteen year old Bayard Sartoris (II) and Marengo Strother, as demanded of him by Matt Bowden to cover the first mistake. Between mid December 1864 and late February 1865, the group was chased by Sartoris, Strother and Theophilus McCaslin. In late January or early February, they left behind Ab Snopes to try to pacify them, but only McCaslin, suffering from rheumatism and a shot wound in his arm, abandoned the pursuit. Some days later, Grumby killed an old black man and strung him up as a ‘final’ warning for Sartoris and Strother that he would not spare them again. In late February, Grumby was betrayed by Bowden, Bridger and other members of his group, who detained both him and Sartoris and Strother, with a pistol each to settle the matter. After failing to kill them, he was himself shot dead by Bayard Sartoris. His body was taken by them to the cotton compress and nailed to its door, his hand to Rosa Millard’s grave.

Governor of Mississippi, March 1937. Elected less than two years earlier.

Class mate of Quentin Compson (III) in Jefferson.

Worked at the livery stable in Oxford in 1873.

Bet on the cotton market in Jefferson in 1928.

Waiter at Deacon Rogers’s restaurant in 1919.

Younger assistant of V K Suratt in 1919, present during the drinking escapade that followed Bayard Sartoris’s racing horse accident.

Son of Mohataha, father of Mrs Habersham. Last Chickasaw chief in Yoknapatawpha County, successor of Issetibbeha. In 1813, traded out of his vast lost domain a square mile of land with Jason Lycurgus Compson (I), to be turned into Compson Place, in return for his racing mare.

Forced to emigrate in 1837 as part of the Indian Removal along with all Chickasaw by whatever means he and his people saw fit, afoot or a horse provided they were Chickasaw horses, to the wild western land presently to be called Oklahoma: not knowing then about the oil.

Called l’Homme (and sometimes de l’homme) by his fosterbrother, a Chevalier of France, who had he not been born too late could have been among the brightest in that glittering galaxy of knightly blackguards who were Napoleon’s marshals, who thus translated the Chickasaw title meaning The Man; which translation Ikkemotubbe, himself a man of wit and imagination as well as a shrewd judge of character, including his own, carried one step further and anglicised it to Doom.

Born c 1903. Son of Elnora. Servant at the Sartoris Place.

Brother of Mohataha. Chickasaw chief in Yoknapatawpha County around 1800, already old then.

Slave at Hawkhurst. When the main building was burnt down by a federate troop in 1863, Louisa Hawk and her two children Drusilla and Dennison (II) moved into his cabin.

Employee at Earl Triplett’s farmers’ supply store in Jefferson in 1928.

Drugstore employee in Jefferson under Dr Alford’s office in 1927.

Bookkeeper at the Jefferson department store in 1919.

Proprietor of the Memphis dancing venue where Red was killed and his funeral held in June 1929.

Born 1830–70. Son of one of Kinston’s first settlers, himself a planter and landholder before the lumber boom, but lost his property through greed and gullability. Resorted to transport passengers to and from the railway station, first by hack, later by car. Regularly told people how he used to lead Kinston society; now he drove it.

Italian. Father of a little girl that followed Quentin Compson (III) around for some time on the day of his suicide in 1910 (near Cambridge, Massachusetts). Accused him of trying to abduct her.

Daughter of Vernon and Cora Tull, younger sister of Eula Tull.

One of three boys out fishing and swimming near Cambridge, Massachusetts, that Quentin Compson (III) met on the day of his suicide in 1910. Left the other two in order to go fishing at the eddy, the other two preferring to go swimming at the mill.

Farmhand. Seduced Dewey Dell Bundren while cotton-picking, and impregnated her in May 1927. Gave her 10 dollar to go to a drugstore and procure an abortifacient.

From Memphis. Prostitute? Long-time mistress of Jason Compson (IV) (between at least 1928 and 1933). In 1929 a friend of Reba Rivers and Miss Myrtle, present at Red’s funeral.

From near Oxford, source of liquor at night in May 1929.

Born c 1891. Servant at the Compson Place.

Born 1911 or some time before. Son of Frony. Servant at the Compson Place. Was not only capable of the complete care and security of an idiot twice his age and three times his size (Maury Compson), but could keep him entertained.

Worked in a drugstore in Jefferson in 1928.

Daughter of Virginius MacCallum (I)? Servant in his household?

Servant in the Mitchell household, left between 1917–19 to start a beauty shop, the money for which had probably been provided by Simon Strother, who was found in her house with his head crushed in in June 1920.

Driver in Jefferson in 1911–12.

Maid in Reba Rivers’s brothel. Married to a cook in a restaurant who not long before May 1929 left her for a waitress because he didn’t approve of her business, taking with him all the clothes and jewelry the white ladies had given Minnie.

Freight agent at the Jefferson railway station in 1919, joined Hub and Bayard Sartoris (III) in a memorable drinking bout.

Sister of Issetibbeha, mother of Ikkemotubbe. Chickasaw matriarch. In 1837 during the Indian Removal, signed away the last of the Chickasaw land in Yoknapatawpha County and left with her people to Oklahoma.

Aviator friend of Bayard Sartoris (III), both during WWI in London and in June 1920 in Chicago.

Born c 1840–45, died after 1925. Slave before 1865, owned by a drugstore owner. Became Jefferson’s US marshal in reconstruction times. Known all his life as Mulberry, because during all this time, before and during and after his incumbency as marshal, peddled illicit whiskey in pint and half-pint bottles from a cache beneath the roots of a big mulberry tree behind the drugstore. Still alive in 1925, then a fire-maker, sweeper, janitor and furnace attendant to five or six lawyers and doctors and one of the banks.

Wife of Vernon. Daughter of the Sheriff?

A girl from Jefferson that Quentin Compson (III) denied kissing.

Brother of Red. In the Summer of 1936 tried to blackmail Temple Stevens over the saucy letters she had written to Red while held in Reba Rivers’s Memphis brothel in 1929. In return, received more saucy letters himself from Stevens, who fell in love with him. Their plans to elope on 13 September were thwarted at the last moment by the murder of Stevens’s daughter by her nurse Nancy Mannigoe.

Servant in the Mitchell household in 1919.

Alabama Red. Died 17 June 1929, New Orleans. Brother of Pete. Memphis thug, bouncer at a nightclub owned by Popeye Vitelli, who in June 1929 over the course of a month had him have sex with Temple Drake in Reba Rivers’ brothel so he could watch the act. Killed on 17 June 1929 by Vitelli with a shot in the forehead in an alley behind the brothel when he tried to climb a rain pipe to visit her in private. Never nobody liked dancing no better than Red.

Cashier at the Sartoris bank in 1919.

Servant in Virginius MacCallum (I)’s household in 1919.

Saddie. Daughter of Elnora, twin sister of Sunday. Named by Horace Benbow. Servant at the Sartoris Place.

One of two men who skipped the fare on a Jefferson-Oxford train boarded by Horace Benbow in May 1929.

Porter at the Jefferson railway station in 1919.

Born South Carolina. Senior student at Harvard in 1910. Promiscuous. Never ran for chapel, and never there on time, but never noted as absent.

Sundy. Son of Elnora, twin brother of Saturday. Named by Horace Benbow. Servant at the Sartoris Place, friend (‘squire’) of Benbow Sartoris.

Servant with an unnamed horse trader in 1919, only person to be able to deal with the wild stallion that Bayard Sartoris (III) (unsuccessfully) attempted to ride.

Born c 1890–95, died 21 May 1929, Old Frenchman Place. Accomplice of Lee Goodwin’s moonshining operation at the Old Frenchman Place. Shot dead by Popeye with a bullet to his head when he tried to prevent Popeye’s rape of Temple Drake. Fiddle music gave him a warm unhappy feeling.

Lived with Minnie Sue about half an hour’s ride outside Frenchman’s Bend in 1919.

Associate of Lee Goodwin and Popeye at the Old Frenchman Place in the years leading up to 1929.

Proprietor of a store in Frenchman’s Bend in 1919.

Husband of Myrtle.

Parson of the Methodist church in Jefferson in 1928. Opposed to the shooting of the pigeons on the church steeple.

A man of considerable talent and influence and intellect and power. Headed a confederation that unsuccessfully plotted to secede the whole Mississippi Valley from the United States and join it to Spain, and that also included his acquaintance Charles Stuart Compson. Did not have to flee the country.

Born Paris. Very short. Lived in Martinique for a while, from where he was coaxed by Thomas Sutpen to come with him to Yoknapatawpha County to construct his plantation house. They arrived on a Sunday in June of 1833. Spent the following two years in Sutpen’s captivity. Lived on venison cooked over a camp fire, in an unfloored tent made of the wagon hood, and said to initially have been kept at night in a kind of pit tied wrist to wrist with one of his captor’s Carib slaves. In the Summer of 1834, when they had finished all the brick and had the foundations laid and most of the big timbers cut and trimmed, made one unsuccessful attempt to escape into the river bottom, as one day he couldn’t stand it anymore or he was afraid he would starve or that the wild niggers (and maybe Colonel Sutpen too) would run out of grub and eat him or maybe he got homesick or maybe he just had to go. Maybe he had a girl or maybe he just wanted a girl. Disappeared in broad daylight in his embroidered vest and Fauntleroy tie and a hat like a Baptist congressman and probably carrying the hat in his hand. Spent fifty-odd hours of dark and swamp and sleeplessness and fatigue and no grub and nowhere to go and no hope of getting there: just a will to endure and a foreknowing of defeat but not beat yet by a damn sight. Pursued by a search party consisting of Sutpen, his slaves, dogs and a number of neighbours including Jason (II) Lycurgus Compson. Run down in the late afternoon of the third day, more than thirteen miles from the house, in a cave under the river bank, and then only because he had hurt his leg trying to architect himself across the river.

In revenge, designed Sutpen’s residence as something like a wing of Versailles glimpsed in a Lilliput’s gothic nightmare. Beginning in 1834, also oversaw the construction of Jefferson’s town square, new courthouse and refurbished jail. These were in the simplest Georgian colonial style, since, as he told them, the residents had no money to buy bad taste with nor even anything from which to copy what bad taste might still have been within their compass.

Returned to New Orleans in 1835, when Thomas Sutpen’s residence was completed save for the windowglass and the ironware which they could not make by hand, and he had received some compensation from Sutpen.

Owner of a fiery, wild stallion in 1919 that Bayard Sartoris (III) unsuccessfully tried to ride.

Lawyer in New Orleans. Enlisted by Eulalia Bon to administrate her fortunate and to act as a steward for Charles (I) Bon. Aware that Thomas Sutpen was his father, equivocated between disappearing with the money at once and using Charles to lay hands on Sutpen’s wealth at the cost of Charles’s ongoing expenditures. Sent Charles to the University of Mississippi at Oxford and an introduction letter for Charles to his half-brother Henry after learning that Henry had started there, in an attempt to engender an incestuous relationship between Charles and his half-sister Judith. In 1861, attacked by Charles after speaking dismissively about Judith. Then departed for Texas or Mexico or somewhere with the remaining funds, possibly after murdering Eulalia Sutpen.

Died 25 May 1929, Jefferson. Hanged for murder. In jail at the same time as Lee Goodwin. Claimed to be the best baritone singer in North Mississippi.

Marshal in Mottson in 1927.

Father of Myrtle? Refused to investigate in 1928 the theft by Quentin Compson (II) of Jason Compson (IV)’s savings, suspecting strongly that much of it actually belonged to her anyway.

Father of Myrtle? Refused to investigate in 1928 the theft by Quentin Compson (II) of Jason Compson (IV)’s savings, suspecting strongly that much of it actually belonged to her anyway.