The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project

Doane's Mill has a transient population of men and women. 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).

One of the two people with "young faces" who stop and let Joe Christmas into their car when they see him standing beside the road, naked and carrying Joanna's pistol (283). She reacts to him with terror.

When this "countryboy" driving past the Burden place with his girlfriend sees Joe Christmas, naked and waving a pistol, he stops and allows him into the car (297). He has the presence of mind to plan to carry Joe to his own house, while pretending to be taking a shortcut.

During the last year of his relationship with Joanna, Joe goes "every week or so" to Memphis, "where he betrays her with other women, women bought for a price" (263).

According to Joanna's story, when her father married his first wife, Juana, this saloon keeper lent some mosquito netting to Nathaniel's sisters to use for making a wedding veil.

When Nathaniel and Juana get married in Kansas, Joanna tells Christmas, "everybody they could get word to or that heard about it, came" (250).

Since the other New England relatives of the Burdens are named Burrington, we presume that's also the name of this cousin of Nathaniel, but all narrative says is that at his cousin's request he finds a woman in New Hampshire willing to move to Jefferson and marry Nathaniel Burden.

Nathaniel Burden's second wife, and Joanna's mother. Joanna, however, talks about Nathaniel's first wife, Juana, in much more detail than she provides about her own mother, who is not given a first name. All we know about her is that she moves to Jefferson from New Hampshire after Nathaniel writes his cousin there that he is seeking a wife who is "a good housekeeper and . . . at least thirtyfive years old" (250). She and Nathaniel marry "two days after" she arrives in town, and "two years later" Joanna, their only child, is born (252).

Although he is leaving Santa Fe by the time Nathaniel Burden, Juana and their son get there - they see "the dust of the stage" that was carrying him away as they arrive - the fact that had been there inspires them to live in Santa Fe "a couple more years," hoping he will return and marry them (247). He never does.

One of Nathaniel Burden's adventures in the West involves "helping some Rangers" clean up "some kind of a mess" with "some folks" and a deputy who is "treed in a dance hall" (247). The law enforcement group commonly referred to as the "Texas Rangers" has been in existence since well before Texas became a state in 1845.