This Union soldier is the "picket of Fitz-John Porter's" - i.e. a man on look-out duty as part of Porter's Union division at Gaines's Mill, Virginia - who shot and killed Grandfather Priest's father during the CIvil War (278).
Like John and Jenny Sartoris, Lucius Priest I is originally from "Carolina" (as with the Sartorises too, the text does not identify which "Carolina," 278). But unlike the Sartorises, the Carolina Priest, Lucius' unnamed father, is a non-commissioned rather than a commissioned officer in the Confederate army, suggesting that he is not a member of the planter class. But if we can assume this home is not a plantation, we know nothing else about it.
