Alexander Holston

One of the first white men in Yoknapatawpha, Alexander Holston established a tavern in Jefferson before the town had any name at all. The "Holston House" that survives in the town in the mid-20th century has had several remodelings, but is still run by descendants with the same last name - making them and the business the most definite point of continuity between Yoknapatawpha's past and its present. Holston himself appears in "A Name for the City" and Requiem for a Nun, where he owns slaves and a padlock that plays a major role in Jefferson's history, and he is probably the "Doctor Holston" who appears in "My Grandmother Millard," though Faulkner seems there to have confused him with Doctor Habersham, who came into Yoknapatawpha with Holston decades before the Civil War. He is also mentioned in five other texts, though his character never comes into a very strong focus.