Pettibone

Pettibone is the only one of the characters, black or white, who appear in the Tidewater section of Absalom! who is named, and in his case the name is an adjective rather than a noun: Sutpen's father comes home one night boasting that "we" - he and other poor white men - "whupped one of Pettibone's niggers tonight" (187). The whole passage suggests that "Pettibone" himself is the owner of a plantation near the one that Sutpen works on.