Rosa's "spinster aunt" (46) lives with the Coldfields in Jefferson and, after Rosa's mother dies, raises the girl. According to Mr. Compson, this aunt is "that strong vindictive consistent woman who seems to have been twice the man that Mr. Coldfield was and who in very truth was not only Miss Rosa's mother but her father too" (49). "A virgin at thirty-five," when Rosa is born, she brings Rosa up in a "closed masonry of females," defined by rage against "the entire male principle" in general and Thomas Sutpen in particular - at least according to Mr. Compson (46, 47).
Wash Jones' only child is a daughter; she is never named in the novel's narrative, but identified as "Melicent" in the novel's Genealogy (308).
She lives for some time with him in the "abandoned" fishing camp at Sutpen's (99). The daughter she gives birth to there is "fatherless" (139). Rosa tells Quentin that she "heard once" that this woman "died in a Memphis brothel" (139) - a "rumor" which the Genealogy repeats (308).
Born into an old Virginia family, General George Pickett was 38 years old when, as a division commander in Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, he led the disastrous charge on the last day of the battle of Gettysburg in which thousands of Confederate soldiers were killed or wounded. The Canadian Shreve gets the battle wrong, and is quickly corrected by Quentin (289).
James Longstreet was one of Lee's corps commanders in the Army of Northern Virginia. In the novel, the regiment of men from Yoknapatawpha that Sutpen leads, which earlier served in "Jackson's corps" (223), is serving in "Longstreet's corps" at the end of the War (277).
"Jackson's corps" - the Confederate force that, according to Mr. Compson, Sutpen's regiment of Yoknapatawpha soldiers served in (223) - was led by General Thomas Jackson - better known as Stonewall Jackson. It was a major force in Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. What Mr. Compson calls Jackson's "ruthless tactical skill" was demonstrated in a number of battles before his death in 1863 (223).
One of the Confederacy's main commanders throughout the Civil War, after 1862 he commanded "the Army of the West" (277), and thus was involved in much of the fighting around Yoknapatawpha.
The "defeated Commander-in-Chief" who signed Sutpen's "citation for valor" was Robert E. Lee. For most of the Civil War he was in command of the Army of Northern Virginia, but at the beginning of 1865, the last year of the war, he was appointed General-in-Chief of the Confederate States Army (13). His signature on the "citation for valor" that Sutpen brings home from the war impresses even Rosa Coldfield, who otherwise thinks Sutpen is a demon (13). "General Lee" is mentioned by name later in the novel (144).
In the Yoknapatawpha fictions as a group, the Benbows are among the county's oldest and most prominent families, but this novel's reference to Judge Benbow's son is "Percy" Benbow's only appearance (172). Chronologically it is possible that Percy is brother of Will Benbow, the Benbow who is the father of Horace and Narcissa Benbow, major figures in Flags in the Dust (1929) and Sanctuary (1931), but that is speculation.
