Young Bayard has to swerve his car to avoid hitting this "Negro family in a wagon" (124). (In Faulkner's first account of this accident, in Flags in the Dust, Bayard swerves to avoid a white man driving a Ford.)
Narcissa Benbow Sartoris, widow of young Bayard, is descended from one of the oldest and most socially prominent families in Jefferson. As a stockholder in the bank, she doesn't vote to elect De Spain its president.
Mrs. Du Pre is John Sartoris' sister, whose longevity enables her to keep house and decorate the interior of the Sartoris bank for her nephew, "Colonel" Sartoris. As a bank stockholder, she does not vote for De Spain as president.
Doctor Peabody appears frequently in the Yoknapatawpha fictions (including the first three Faulkner published). In this novel (as in Flags in the Dust) he is the Jefferson physician who diagnoses Bayard Sartoris' heart condition.
These World War I veterans in McLendon's company return to Jefferson early in 1919, "except two dead from flu and a few in hospital," "all home again to wear their uniforms too around the Square for a while" (123).
Charles tells us that during World War I, "one of Captain McClendon's company was wounded in the first battle in which American troops were engaged and was back in his uniform with his wound stripe in 1918" (123). He is the first veteran of the war to return to Jefferson. (Historically, this first battle was the Battle of Cantigny, 28 May 1918.)
As Ratliff explains to Charles, during World War I Montgomery Ward Snopes ran brothels in France. He began in a little town with "a young French lady he happened to know" (120, since Charles is only five at the time, Ratliff resorts to evasive terms), then set up a bigger brothel in Paris, "adding more and more entertaining ladies to that-ere new canteen he set up in Paris" (121). The ladies themselves are not described in any more detail. (Prostitution was legal in France at this time, though it was illegal to run a brothel.)
