Unnamed Residents of Doane's Mill

The people of Doane's Mill in Light in August only there temporarily. A few of them, including Lucas Burch, are "young bachelors" (6), but there are also "perhaps five families" living there and working "in the mill or for it" when Lena comes to live with McKinley and his family (4). One of these people is the "foreman" who serves as Lucas Burch's pretext for abandoning Lena Grove in Doane's Mill; another may be this foreman's "cousin," or he may be a figment of Burch's imagination (19). As a group, the workers arrived in Doane's Mill by freight car to extract lumber and will be freighted away when the area is deforested.