In Faulkner's first Yoknapatawpha fiction, Flags in the Dust, the Benbows are identified as one of the oldest and most prominent families in the county, though they do not figure among the county's large plantation owners. In the fictions as a group there seem to be two different "Judge Benbow"s - Will Benbow, who is the father of Horace and Narcissa (major characters in earlier novels), and the one in Absalom! who has a son named "Percy" (172). Chronologically, this novel's Judge Benbow could be Horace and Narcissa's grandfather, but that is speculation.
John L. Sullivan was the last heavyweight American prizefighter to win his championship without wearing gloves ("bare knuckle"). He was the son of Irish immigrants who became rich, which to General Compson may make him comparable to Sutpen, the 'immigrant' to Yoknapatawpha.
The enslaved man who holds the reins of Sutpen's horse when he dismounts at the Holston House is identified simply as "the negro hostler" (34). A hostler is someone who tends to the horses of people staying at an inn or hotel.
Also called "a posse" (35), the "vigilance committee" that accompanies the county sheriff when he confronts Sutpen on suspicion of theft originally consists of "eight or ten" men (34). In an essentially comic scene, this group follows Sutpen on his courtship errand as their numbers grow (according to General Compson) to "almost fifty" men (35) - including "other horsemen [who] rode into the square" and "others who did not happen to have horses" (35) as well as some of the men who were lounging "on the gallery of the Holston House" when Sutpen reached town (34).
The "sheriff of the county" leads the "posse" that follows and then arrests Sutpen on suspicion of having committed some kind of crime (34, 35). This "sheriff" is probably not Major de Spain, who is the county sheriff in the years immediately following the Civil War.
In Absalom!, the narrator identifies the Chickasaw chief "from whom [Sutpen] got his land" as "old Ikkemotubbe" (33). Elsewhere he is referred to (by Shreve) only as "a poor ignorant Indian" (145) and (by the hypothetical lawyer in New Orleans) as "a drunken Indian" (241). Often referred to by the name "Doom," Ikkemotubbe appears frequently in Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha fictions.
This icon represents the "someone (not General Compson)" who is in town on the day in 1833 when Sutpen arrives and looks into his covered wagon to see what or who is there (27).
Conventionally, the enslaved people in the antebellum South were divided into two categories: 'field Negroes,' who had little contact with whites other than overseers, and 'house Negroes,' who worked indoors as cooks, maids, butlers, and so on. Jefferson's "house negroes" first appear accompanying the white "ladies and children" to church services, carrying the "parasols and flywhisks" that keep the sun and insects away from the whites (23).
Goodhue Coldfield's mother is a very elusive character. The novel several times asserts that Rosa Coldfield's childhood was spent in a household consisting of her father and her aunt, but in one passage it refers to the fact that Mr. Coldfield had to support "a dependent mother" as well as his family (32).
