"The first Sutpen" in North America, according to Quentin's narrative in Absalom!, "probably" arrived in Jamestown on a "ship from the Old Bailey" - i.e. a ship transporting convicted criminals from London to the British colony of Virginia (180).
This is the second of the two illegitimate Sutpen children that one of Thomas' older sisters gives birth to before the family reaches the end of their journey in the Tidewater area of Virginia.
This is the first of the two illegitimate Sutpen children in Absalom! that one of Thomas' older sisters gives birth to during the family's journey across Virginia; he or she was born in "a cowshed" (183).
At the time the Sutpens begin traveling east in Absalom!, this youngest member of the family "couldn't even walk yet" (180). The novel's sequence of events implies that his mother died giving birth to him or her, and that death precipitated the father's decision to move back to Tidewater - but that isn't made explicit.
Thomas Sutpen has at least two sisters: according to the narrative in Absalom!, "one of the sisters" altered their father's hand-me-down clothes to fit the young Thomas (185). This entry is for the "sister" who, during the family's move from the mountains to the Tidewater region of Virginia, gives birth in "a cowshed" to an illegitimate child (183), and gets pregnant again, though "still unmarried" (181), while they are still traveling.
This is one of the Sutpen family's "two older boys" (that is, older than Thomas) who leave the family's home in the mountains "some time before" their mother dies and their father moves the family east (181).
Thomas Sutpen comes from a large family, though Absalom! doesn't say exactly how large. He has at least two older brothers: these "two older boys" leave home "some time before" their mother dies and their father moves the family east (181). This is the brother who "had been as far West as the Mississippi River one time" even before the family left the mountains (183).
As the central figure in one of Faulkner's greatest novels, Absalom, Absalom!, Thomas Sutpen is a very different character, depending on which of the novel's story-tellers is telling his story. On the opening pages, for example, he is a dominant if demonic force that, according to Miss Rosa, is responsible for destroying the culture of the Old South. When he gets to tell his own story, however, as transmitted through three generations of Compsons, he appears as a traumatized small boy who is himself determined if not destroyed by the culture of the Old South.
As evoked in Absalom!, Thomas Sutpen's mother was "a mountain woman," "bred in the mountains," but in her case the mountains were in Scotland (195). According to Sutpen, she "never did quite learn to speak English" (195). Her husband calls her "a fine wearying woman," and it is suggested that she made him move from coastal Virginia to the mountains (180). Her death precipitates the husband's decision to return east; since there is an infant in the family when the move starts, it seems likely that she died in childbirth.
Sutpen's father moves back to coastal Virginia after his wife's death, where he works ("or maybe supposes" to work, 185) on a large Tidewater plantation. He is characterized in Absalom! mainly by his habitual drunkenness, and his "harsh" belief in "his own worth" and "his own physical prowess" (186) - virtues that he seeks to establish by "whupping" a slave from a neighboring plantation (187).
