The Golden Book of
Yoknapatawpha County

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.