The narrative refers to the small farmers and others who live in the neighborhood of the Old Frenchman place in several ways: they are the Frenchman's "nameless and unrecorded successors," his "shiftless and illiterate heirs at large" who have been pulling his huge house apart for firewood for generations (136); they are among the spectators who, after spending the day watching Armstid digging, can be seen talking about him "in halted wagons along the quiet roads and lanes" and "in the fields or at the cabin doors about the slow, laborious land" (137).
Mrs. Armstid gets the "bits of cloth" for the "fancy objects" she weaves to supplement the family's meager income from people whom the narrative refers to as "the women in Jefferson" (142). The implication is that they see her as an object of charity, but that is not spelled out.
