"When Father was a boy," Lucius Priest says in his narrative, "he used to fox hunt with old Dan's father out at Frenchman's Bend" (8). Dan is Dan Grinnup, but his father's last name could have been Grenier. He was descended from Louis Grenier, the man from whom Frenchman's Bend gets its name. Because Dan and a "cousin or something" are the last living descendants of Grenier at the time of the story (8), we know his father is dead.
The narrative calls them "drummers," a term Faulkner expected his readers to know meant traveling salesmen (8). Taking them to and from the railroad station and the hotel is a steady source of business for Maury Priest's livery stable.
This character is identified as an "idiot nephew or cousin or something" of Dan Grinnup, and like him is a last living descendant of the Grenier family, perhaps the oldest white family in Yoknapatawpha (7). He lives "in a tent in the river jungle beyond Frenchman's Bend," on land that had once been part of the big antebellum "plantation" belonging to Louis Grenier (the "Frenchman" from whom the Bend gets its name, 7). (In "Hand upon the Waters" and Intruder in the Dust this man is named Lonnie Grinnup, and lives in a shack on the same location as the tent.)
Louis Grenier is the man after whom both the Old Frenchman Place and Frenchman's Bend are named. According to the account of him in The Reivers, he was a "Huguenot," i.e. one of the many Protestants who fled France to avoid persecution in the 18th century, who "came down into Mississippi in the seventeen nineties and established Jefferson and named it" (7). "The Grenier plantation" was a large holding on the Yoknapatawpha River before the Civil War; since then both the place and the family have gone "to seed" (7).
"Old Dan" Grinnup is one of the last two surviving members of the Grenier family, perhaps the oldest white family in Yoknapatawpha. A "dirty old man with a tobacco-stained beard," he is "never quite completely drunk," but obviously is an alcoholic (7). His daughter married Ballott, the stable's foreman, but apparently he owes his marginal position at work to the fact that, when the family was in better circumstances, Maury Priest "used to fox hunt with old Dan's father out at Frenchman's Bend" (8).
Five black employees at Priest's livery stable are mentioned by name. This icons represents the others, whom the narrative refers to as "all the Negro drivers and hostlers" and "the last lowly stall cleaner" (7). Besides the day and night foremen, apparently the only white employee is Dan Grinnup.
"Mr Ballott's first wife" was the daughter of Dan Grinnup (8). Ballott's other wife or wives are not mentioned, and the narrative does not explain why he is no longer married to this woman, but divorce is so rare in Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha that it seems likely she has died.
Luster works in the livery stable, though his specific job is not made clear. (There's no suggestion that this Luster is the same person who works for the Compsons in The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom!.)
Gabe is identified as "the blacksmith" at Priest's livery stable (6). "Though short, he was a tremendously big man," one of whose knees is "terrifically twisted from an old injury in his trade" (9).
Mr. Ballott is "the white stable foreman" at the Priest livery stable (7). He runs the business and keeps track of the black employees during the day. The reference to his "first wife" makes it clear that he has been married at least twice (8).
