Trumbull

As the blacksmith of Frenchman's Bend for "almost twenty years" (69), Trumbull is also a kind of handyman to Will Varner. He fabricates Varner's makeshift rocking chair "by sawing an empty flour barrel half through the middle and trimming out the sides and nailing a seat into it" (6). The blacksmith is an elderly man who is "hale, morose and efficient" and "invite[s] no curiosity" until he is displaced by the Snopes. Flem Snopes replaces the experienced blacksmith with his cousins I.O. Snopes and Eck Snopes, two novices who cannot even fire the forge or shoe Houston's horse. After his expulsion, Trumbull quickly abandons Frenchman's Bend, driving "through the village with his wife, in a wagon loaded with household goods," and is never seen there again (72).