Sheriff Hampton 3

At least two and probably three of the Yoknapatawpha county sheriffs are named "Hampton." They are all named, or nicknamed, "Hub," except for one "Hope Hampton." They appear in five novels and one short story. While the scholarly consensus is that there are two Sheriff Hamptons, our data suggests that there are three: grandfather, father and son - or perhaps great-grandfather, grandson and great-grandson. This youngest of them is definitely the son of a Sheriff Hampton in both the novels in which he appears. As "Big Hub" and "Little Hub," he and his father are both mentioned in The Mansion: at some point during Mink Snopes' tenure in jail, the son takes over the role of sheriff. He also inherits his father's "capacity to stay on the best of political terms with his alternating opposite number" - the man who takes turns being sheriff with both Hamptons, Ephriam Bishop (407). As Lucius Priest tells the story of The Reivers in the early 1960s, he notes that the "Little Hub" Hampton "who is sheriff now" is the grandson of the Hampton who is sheriff in 1905 (14). Faulkner may have lost track of his Hamptons, however; chronologically it's more likely that "Little Hub" the great-grandson of the man who was sheriff in 1905.