Hawkhurst (Location Key)

Hawkhurst is the name of the Alabama plantation that belongs to the Hawk family in The Unvanquished stories. It is in the fictional Gihon county in the northwest part of the state, not far from the Mississippi border and about one hundred miles from Yoknapatawpha. Louisa Hawk is the sister of Rosa Millard, John Sartoris' mother-in-law. When Rosa and Bayard and Ringo visit the plantation in "Raid," it too has been burned down by Yankee troops, probably shortly after the battle in nearby Shiloh in which Dennison Hawk, the owner of the plantation, was killed. "There was no house there" - all that remains of the Hawk mansion are piles of ashes and "four chimneys standing gaunt and blackened in the sun like the chimneys at home" (86). The remaining members of the white family - Louisa and her children Drusilla and Denny - are living in the slave cabin that was previously occupied by Jingus. Jingus is still there, presumably sleeping in "Missy Lena's cabin" (99), but most if not all of the other slaves seem to have left to follow the Union army. The grounds also hold a family graveyard and border on a railroad track. When Bayard last visited Hawkhurst several years earlier, the newly constructed track was in pristine condition. Now, the tracks have been dismantled and wrapped around trees by the Union troops. The location is also mentioned in "The Unvanquished" (re-titled "Riposte in Tertio" as a chapter in The Unvanquished) and "Skirmish at Sartoris."