Graveyard at Old Frenchman Place (Location Key)
According to the narrator of both "Lizards in Jamshyd's Courtyard" and The Hamlet, the people who died at the Old Frenchman place when it was a working antebellum plantation were buried in a cemetery that lies "on a smaller knoll" than the mansion house and "four hundred yards" away from it (136, 375). Their "weathered and illegible headstones" remain (136, 375). Apparently slaves were buried there too, since the narrative says that "the progenitors of saxophone players in Harlem honky-tonks" lie there with the kinfolks of the Old Frenchman (136, 375). In other fictions the white family is named Grenier. Although slaves belonging to the old Frenchman appear in several texts, their names are not mentioned anywhere.
The family graveyard at the 'Old Frenchman place' is mentioned in both "Lizards in Jamshyd's Courtyard" and The Hamlet, although the family is not named. From other Faulkner fictions, however, we know that the 'Old Frenchman' was Louis Grenier, one of the first white inhabitants of Yoknapatawpha. Before the Civil War his 'place' was one of the county's largest slave plantations, and the people who died at there when it was a working plantation were buried in a cemetery that lies "on a smaller knoll" than the mansion house and "four hundred yards" away from it ("Lizards," 136). Their "weathered and illegible headstones" remain (136). Apparently these people included Grenier's slaves, since the both texts say that "the progenitors of saxophone players in Harlem honky-tonks" lie there along with the kinfolks of the Old Frenchman (136). To this description The Hamlet adds that Louis Grenier himself is buried there (375).
Occupants: Old Frenchman [Louis Grenier], Other Greniers, Unnamed Slaves of the Old Frenchman
Linked Locations
digyok:node/location_key/10038