The mother of the mail rider in "A Name for the City" and again in Requiem for a Nun was "from old Ferginny" (23). When she named her son "Thomas Jefferson Pettigrew," hoping that that famous name might bring her son some "luck," she also indirectly provided the county seat of Yoknapatawpha with its name (23).
Thomas Jefferson, the third U.S. President and indirect source of the name of Jefferson, Yoknapatawpha, is only mentioned in two of the fictions: "A Name for City" and again in Requiem for a Nun. Both these texts explain how, by way of a mail carrier named Pettigrew, Jefferson acquired its name; neither says anything about Jefferson as a man or President.
Walking through the Square, Mink sees the "drummers sitting in leather chairs along the sidewalk" in front of the Holston House (37). A 'drummer' was a traveling salesman.
In "Knight's Gambit" Sebastian Gualdres is "the Argentine cavalry captain" whom Mrs. Harriss and her children meet in South America after Mr. Harriss’s death (170). He is one of the more exotic figures to appear in Yoknapatawpha. The narrative notes the stereotypical assumptions that the people of Yoknapatawpha have about him as "a Latin" (174), but in its depiction of his courtesy, his pride and his machismo, the narrative itself seems not unwilling to reinforce the stereotypes.
This man appears in four texts under three different names; in all four he is associated with World War I, but in very different ways. In "Dry September" he is John McLendon, a decorated veteran who takes command of the lynch mob; he has a "heavy-set body," an aggressive temperament, and a wife whom he violently abuses (171). He plays a much smaller role as McLendon in Light in August: a customer at the barbershop who was there when Christmas "run in and dragged [Lucas Burch] out" (87).
In The Mansion the name "Turpin" comes up in two different chronological contexts. Both are associated with Frenchman's Bend, but this is the earlier of the two, the "Turpin" who is listed among the five local young men who are courting Eula Varner in the early 20th century (133).
The name "Turpin" comes up in the novel in two different chronological contexts. Both are associated with Frenchman's Bend, but this is the "Turpin" who is mentioned in the earlier of the two, when the list of the five local young men who are courting Eula Varner includes "Turpins" (133).
When Ike hears a "big woodpecker," the narrator points out that this bird is "called Lord-to-God by Negroes" (192). (On account of their size, both the pileated and the ivory-billed woodpeckers are colloquially called the "Lord God bird." The ivory-billed is - or was; it is commonly believed to be extinct now - the larger of the two.)
