The Golden Book of
Yoknapatawpha County

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.