1827 Sutpen married first wife in Haiti.
1828 Goodhue Coldfield moved to Yoknapatawpha County (Jefferson) Mississippi: mother, sister, wife, and daughter Ellen.
1829 Charles Bon born, Haiti.
1831 Sutpen learns his wife has Negro blood, repudiates her and child.
1833 Sutpen appears in Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, takes up land, builds his house.
1834 Clytemnestra (Clytie) born to slave woman.
1838 Sutpen married Ellen Coldfield.
1839 Henry Sutpen born, Sutpen's Hundred .1841 Judith Sutpen born.
1845 Rosa Coldfield born.
1850 Wash Jones moves into abandoned fishing camp on Sutpen's plantation, with his daughter.
1853 Milly Jones born to Wash Jones' daughter.
1859 Henry Sutpen and Charles Bon meet at University of Mississippi. Judith and Charles meet that Christmas.
Charles Etienne Saint Valery Bon born, New Orleans.
1860 Christmas, Sutpen forbids marriage between Judith and Bon. Henry repudiates his birthright, departs with Bon.
1861 SSutpen, Henry, and Bon depart for war.
1862 Ellen Coldfield dies.
1864 Goodhue Coldfield dies.
1865 Henry kills Bon at gates. Rosa Coldfield moves out to Sutpen's Hundred.
1866 Sutpen becomes engaged to Rosa Coldfield, insults her. She returns to Jefferson.
1867 Sutpen takes up with Milly Jones.
1869 Milly's child is born. Wash Jones kills Sutpen.
1870 Charles E. St V. Bon appears at Sutpen's Hundred.
1871 Clytie fetches Charles E. St V. Bon to Sutpen's Hundred to live.
1881 Charles E. St V. Bon returns with Negro wife.
1882 Jim Bond born.
1884 Judith and Charles E. St V. Bon die of smallpox.
1910
September
December
Rosa Coldfield and Quentin find Henry Sutpen hidden in the house.
Rosa Coldfield goes out to fetch Henry to town, Clytie sets fire to the house.
GENEALOGY
THOMAS SUTPEN Born in West Virginia mountains, 1807. One of several children of poor whites, Scotch‐English stock. Established plantation of Sutpen's Hundred in Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, 1833. Married (x) Eulalia Bon, Haiti, 1827.
(2) Ellen Coldfield, Jefferson, Mississippi, 1838. Mayor, later Colonel,‐‐th Mississippi Infantry, C.S.A. Died, Sutpen's Hundred, 1869.
EULALIA BON Born in Haiti. Only child of Haitian sugar planter of French descent.
Married Thomas Sutpen, 1827, divorced from him, 1831. Died in New Orleans, date unknown.
CHARLES BON Son of Thomas and Eulalia Bon Sutpen. Only child.
Attended University of Mississippi, where he met Henry Sutpen and became engaged to Judith Private, later lieutenant,‐‐th Company, (University Grays)‐‐th Mississippi Infantry, C. S. A.
Died, Sutpen's Hundred, 1865.
GOODHUE COLDFIELD Born in Tennessee. Moved to Jefferson, Miss 1828, established small mercantile business. Died, Jefferson, 1864.
ELLEN COLDFIELD Daughter of Goodhue Coldfield. Born in Tennessee, 1818. Married Thomas Sutpen, Jefferson, Miss 1838. Died, Sutpen's Hundred, 1862.
ROSA COLDFIELD Daughter of Goodhue Coldfield. Born, Jefferson, 1845.
Died, Jefferson, 1910.
HENRY SUTPEN Born, Sutpen's Hundred, 1839, son of Thomas and Ellen Coldfield Sutpen.
Attended University of Mississippi. Private,‐‐th Company, (University Grays)‐‐th Mississippi Infantry, C.S.A. Died, Sutpen's Hundred, 1910.
JUDITH SUTPEN Daughter of Thomas and Ellen Coldfield Sutpen.
Born, Sutpen's Hundred, 1841.
Became engaged to Charles Bon, 1860. Died, Sutpen's hundred, 1884.
CLYTEMNESTRA SUTPEN Daughter of Thomas Sutpen and a Negro slave.
Born, Sutpen's Hundred, 1834. Died, Sutpen's Hundred, 1910.
WASH JONES Date and location of birth unknown. Squatter, residing in an abandoned fishing camp belonging to Thomas Sutpen, hanger‐on of Sutpen, handy man about Sutpen's place while Sutpen was away between '61 and '65. Died, Sutpen's Hundred, 1869.
MELICENT JONES Daughter of Wash Jones. Date of birth unknown.
Rumored to have died in a Memphis brothel.
MILLY JONES Daughter of Melicent Jones. Born 1853. Died, Sutpen's Hundred, 1869.
UNNAMED INFANT Daughter of Thomas Sutpen and Milly Jones. Born, died, Sutpen's Hundred, same day, 1869.
CHARLES ETIENNE SAINT‐VALERY BON Only child of Charles Bon and an octoroon mistress whose name is not recorded. Born, New Orleans, 1859.
Married a full‐blood Negress, name unknown, 1879. Died, Sutpen's Hundred, 1884. jim BOND
(Bon) Son of Charles Etienne Saint‐Valery Bon. Born, Sutpen's Hundred, 1882.
Disappeared from Sutpen's Hundred, 1910.
Whereabouts unknown.
QUENTIN COMPSON Grandson of Thomas Sutpen's first Yoknapatawpha County friend.
Born, Jefferson, 1891. Attended Harvard, 1909‐10. Died, Cambridge, Mass., 1910.
SHREVLIN MCCANNON Born, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, 1890.
Attended Harvard, 1909‐14. Captain, Royal Army Medical Corps, Canadian Expeditionary Forces, France, 1914‐18. Now a practising surgeon, Edmonton, Alta.
Absalom, Absalom!
Quentin Compson and Shreve, his Harvard room‐mate, are obsessed by the rise and fall of Thomas Sutpen. As a poor white boy, Sutpen was turned away from a plantation owner's mansion by a Negro butler. From then on, Sutpen determined to be a Virginia plantation owner himself. .. but tragically his values remain those of the butler.
His ambitions are soon realized, plantation, marriage, children, his own troop to fight in the Civil War... but Sutpen returned to find his estate in ruins. Worse, Charles, son of Sutpen's first repudiated marriage to a partly coloured girl, seeks engagement to Sutpen's daughter, Judith. When Charles realizes this, he offers to give Up Judith for recognition by Sutpen.
Sutpen refuses, And, in time, his dynastic ambitions shrink to an idiot gibbering in an overgrown wilderness.
About the Author
William Faulkner was born near Oxford, Mississippi, in 1897. His great‐grandfather, Colonel William Falkner (so‐spelt) had been one of the wild characters of the South. The author, who had made little impression at school, was rejected by the U.S. Army when America entered the First World War but became a pilot in the Canadian Flying Corps. After the war he attended the University of Mississippi for a time and then for several years did odd jobs of many kinds. While working in New Orleans he met Sherwood Anderson, the novelist, who encouraged him: as a result he wrote his first novel, Soldier's Pay (1926). Others followed. It was in 1929, the year of his marriage, that he took a job as coal‐bearer on night‐work at the local power station and wrote As I lay Dying (193o) between the hours of midnight and 4 a.m. during a space of six summer weeks. He next wrote Sanctuary, intending it to be sensational enough to attract sales, which had not been good on his earlier books.
Later he worked on scripts in Hollywood, simply for the money.
Not long before his death in July, 1962, William Faulkner moved his home to Charlottesville, Virginia. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949. His other books include Light in August (1932), The Wild Palms (1939), Go down, Moses (1944), Intruder in the Dust (1948), and Requiem for a qun (1951), all published in Penguins, as well as The Reivers (1962). ABSALOM, ABSALOM! WILLIAM FAULKNER