Louis Grenier is only mentioned in The Town, as one of the men who "started Jefferson" (338). He has a permanent place, however, in the larger Yoknapatawpha story, as the Frenchman after whom Frenchman's Bend is still named.
The grandson and namesake of the first American Vladimir Kyrilytch Ratcliffe came to Mississippi in the early 19th century, becoming one of the men who "started Jefferson" (338). Eula, who is the source for this information, does not say any more about him than that. The descendants who bear his name through the following generations "forgot how to spell it Ratcliffe and just spelled it like it sounds" - i.e. Ratliff (338).
General Burgoyne was a British commander who, as Eula puts it, "surrendered in the Revolution" after his forces in Saratoga were surrounded by a superior force of colonial soldiers (338). Historically his defeat had important results for the cause of American independence; in the novel, his surrender made V.K. Ratliff's ancestor the family's first American.
