This icon represents the residences of the earliest inhabitants of what will become (before the end of the story) the town of Jefferson. At the start of the story these residences are described as "a half-dozen log cabins set in a disorderly huddle in the middle of the wilderness" (200).
The third act of the novel is titled "The Jail" (167), which gives this location an unusually large symbolic significance. Gavin Stevens himself "was wont to say" that the best way to learn "the history of a community" is to study the graffiti drawn by successive generations of prisoners on their cell walls (168). The novel does not include any examples of this record - though it gives a prominent thematic role to the name and date that the jailor's daughter left behind on a window pane in the jail, scratched there in 1861 by means of her diamond ring (180).
The "mortised-log, mud-chinked shakedown jail" was one of the first structures built by the whites who settle Yoknapatawpha (201). It usually confines "local brawlers and drunkards and runaway slaves" (202). But when the gang of bandits is locked up there, the jail also becomes the first Yoknapatawpha structure to be destroyed - or at least ruined: when the bandits break jail, they also break the jail, taking down one "entire wall," "the mud-chinked, axe-mortised logs unjointed neatly," removed, "and stacked as neatly to one side" (208).
The name of the city - Jefferson - is first spoken in a stall in "the Holston House stable" (213), where "Thomas Jefferson Pettigrew" is grooming the horse he rides back and forth between the settlement and Nashville (214).
The name of the city - Jefferson - is first spoken in a stall in "the Holston House stable" (22), where "Thomas Jefferson Pettigrew" is grooming the horse he rides back and forth between the settlement and Nashville (23).
The Holston House was Jefferson's first tavern, founded by Alexander Holston, one of the town's original three white inhabitants. As the story notes, it "still" exists in Jefferson over a century later, with its "original log walls and puncheon floors and hand-mortised joints . . . still buried somewhere beneath the modern pressed glass and brick veneer and neon tubes" of the mid-20th century hotel (202).
The Holston House was Jefferson's first tavern, founded by Alexander Holston, one of the town's original three white inhabitants. As the narrative notes, is "still" exists in Jefferson over a century later, with its "original log walls and puncheon floors and hand-mortised joints . . . still buried somewhere beneath the modern pressed glass and brick veneer and neon tubes" of the mid-20th century "hotel" (7, 167).
Before Jefferson had a name, before it was even a village, it was a "Chickasaw agency trading post" - the place where the indigenous population of the region interacted with an agent appointed to represent the federal government in its dealings with them (3). It sells "calico and gunpowder, whiskey and salt and snuff and denim pants and osseous candy" to the Chickasaw Indians and their "Negro slaves," for which the U.S. government is billed (17).
Before Jefferson had a name, before it was even a village, it was a "Chickasaw agency trading post" - a place where the indigenous population of the region interacted with an agent appointed to represent the federal government in its dealings with them (200). The story describes this building as a "post-office-trading-post-store" which contains at least two rooms, including the "back room" where the agency records were stored (202). It's likely that the agent also lived there.
Like many of the inhabitants of Yoknapatawpha throughout Faulkner's fictions, the lock which plays such a large role in the history of Jefferson originated in "Carolina" (200). Here, as typically, Faulkner does not say which Carolina, but South is more likely than North.
