Unnamed Founder of Museum

The narrator of "Shall Not Perish" mentions "an old lady born and raised in Jefferson who died rich somewhere in the North and left some money to the town to build a museum with" (110). Faulkner likely based this character upon the historical figure Mary Buie, an artist who died in 1937 and left her estate to Oxford. The town opened the Buie Museum in 1939, four years before the publication of "Shall Not Perish."