Hawkhurst in "Skirmish at Sartoris" (Location)

Hawkhurst is the plantation owned by the Hawk family to whom John Sartoris' wife is related. It is about one hundred miles from Jefferson, in northwestern Alabama, in a fictional county named "Gihon" (59). Hawkhurst is described in more detail in the earlier Unvanquished short story "Raid," which includes an account of the visit there that Bayard recalls in this story. Like the mansion at Sartoris, the 'big house' at Hawkhurst has also been burned by Union troops, sometime after the battle of Shiloh (April 6-7, 1862), so that the surviving Hawks also live in a cabin that was built to house slaves.