The Golden Book of
Yoknapatawpha County

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.