Submitted by jjoiner@keuka.edu on Sat, 2017-09-23 15:20
The Widringtons live in one of Jefferson's new developments in town, built after the streets were paved. The Widringtons have a Cadillac and a dog "that they said cost five hundred dollars" (380). When not riding in the Cadillac, the dog is seen "sneering out through the window in the house where it - they - lived" (381).
Vardaman is the son of I.O. Snopes and his second wife and twin brother to Bilbo Snopes. He is named for James K. Vardaman, a well-known white supremacist who served as both a Governor of Mississippi and a United States Senator.
Bilbo is the son of I.O. Snopes and his second wife and the twin to Vardaman Snopes. The man after whom he is named, Theodore G. Bilbo, was a well-known white supremacist in Mississippi.
This woman is the mother of Montgomery Ward Snopes. She appears suddenly in Frenchman's Bend after I.O. has married his second wife and fathered three children with her. She becomes the proprietor of the Snopes Hotel in Jefferson, which caters to a lower-class, usually country-bred, clientele. (In Flags in the Dust, however, the Snopes who takes over the hotel is Clarence's mother - which according to The Town would be I.O.'s second wife.)
I.O. Snopes' second wife, who "wasn't a big girl neither - Miz Vernon Tull's sister's niece by marriage she was" (39), is the mother of Clarence, Vardaman, and Bilbo. In her character as "Clarence Snopes' maw" - as Ratliff refers to her (384) - she summons the men at Varner's store to rescue her son from "Them Indians!" - as she refers to Byron's children (388); Ratliff credits her "mother love and mother instinct" for knowing that her son's life was in danger (388).
Zack Houston is the husband and widower of Letty Bookright. A proud, prosperous, and hot-tempered farmer, he lost his wife when his prized stallion killed her. Houston himself was killed by Mink Snopes. (In The Hamlet his first name is Jack.)
Trumbull is the blacksmith in Frenchman's Bend, "man and boy for fifty years" until Flem tries to install two of his cousins, I.O. and Eck, in his place (38). When they prove their incompetence, Trumbull is restored to the position.
Gavin Stevens describes him: "I.O., the blacksmith-cum-schoolmaster-cum-bigamist, or -times bigamist, multiplied by bigamy - a thin undersized voluble weasel-faced man talking constantly in a steady stream of worn saws and proverbs usually having no connection with one another nor application to anything else, who even with the hammer would not have weighed as much as the anvil he abrogated and dispossessed" (37). He is the father of Montgomery Ward by his first wife and Vardaman, Bilbo, and Clarence by his second wife.
Submitted by crieger@semo.edu on Thu, 2017-09-21 16:02
Though the narrator is unnamed in this story, he is apparently Charles "Chick" Mallison, Jr., so the dead father he briefly mentions (132) would be Charles Mallison, Sr.
Submitted by crieger@semo.edu on Thu, 2017-09-21 15:52
According to Joel Flint, impersonating Wesley Pritchel, the old man had "four children," all of whom have died (130); Joel is just mean enough to include the one he killed, Ellie, in this count. As Ellie Flint (nee Pritchel) she has her own entry in the database.
