The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project

The Merchants and Farmers Bank was "started twenty years ago" by Colonel Sartoris (169); it is called the "new bank" to distinguish it from the Bank of Jefferson, the "old bank" (37). Being President of this Sartoris bank is the ultimate and achieved goal of Flem Snopes' careful scheming.

Of the two banks in Yoknapatawpha, the "Bank of Jefferson" is referred to as "the old bank"; the one that Sartoris establishes is the "new bank" (37).

The fight between Gavin Stevens and Manfred de Spain in "that alley behind the Ladies' Cotillion Club Christmas ball" (143) and its causes, are described in more detail in The Town, which says that the ball itself is held in Jefferson's Opera House.

"The power plant" where Flem is the superintendent provides the town with electricity (143).

"Dilazuck's livery stable" - as the town's livery stable is named in this novel - has a lot behind it where auctions are held, and where horses and mules are traded (202).

Buffaloe's "back yard" is where the first automobile in Jefferson was made (37). The property is described in considerable detail in Faulkner's last novel, The Reivers.

After graduating from high school Linda Snopes enrolls in a school that the novel calls "the Seminary" (156). There is a "Seminary Ridge" in Yoknapatawpha; Gavin Stevens has a poignant moment when he stops there in The Town. But also in The Town Linda attends the Jefferson Female Academy, which in this novel is where several young women go, including Melisandre Backus and Maggie Stevens (217).

The name of the place where Mrs. Ledbetter lives - "Rockyford" (158) - does not appear elsewhere in Faulkner's fiction, but its name suggests it is on a river, and the fact that when Ratliff is going there he can give Flem a lift to Varner's store suggests the river is the Yoknapatawpha rather than the Tallahatchie. The place we locate it on the map is based on those two deductions, which of course cannot be confirmed.

The foreman of the Grand Jury in Jefferson in the late 1940s, when Stevens presents his petition for Mink's parole, is described as a man who "runs a small electric-driven corn-mill" (407). Since no other details are given - the size or location of the mill, for example - we can't be sure where to locate this mill on our map of Yoknapatawpha or what this detail tells us about progress in northeastern Mississippi.