The "Jackson women" who in Requiem for a Nun sponsor the three-day "Kermis Ball" to raise money for a Confederate monument in 1887 may belong to an early version of a group like the United Daughters of the Confederacy (87). The term "kermis" refers to an outdoor festival.
In Requiem for a Nun, these people are the "kin or friends or acquaintances" of the "outlanders" who move to Jefferson after World War II; they are described as visiting "from the East or North or California" on their way "to New Orleans or Florida" (196).
"The U.D.C. ladies" who "instigated and bought" the Confederate statue that stands at the center of Jefferson in Requiem for a Nun are members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, an organization of Southern women that was founded in 1894 in Nashville, Tennessee (188). Members actively served the 'Lost Cause' of the Old South and the Confederacy by sponsoring the construction of monuments, lobbying boards of education, and so on.
These are "the invisible spectators" in the courtroom who "gasp" at Nancy's response upon being given the death sentence at the start of Act I in Requiem for a Nun (41). The play's second scene makes it clear that Temple and Gowan Stevens are among those present, but from the text's only description of the spectators - they are "invisible" - we cannot say that for sure.
One of the "three Frenchmen" mentioned in Requiem for a Nun traveling down the Mississippi River in "a Chippeway canoe" is almost certainly René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, the 17th-century French explorer credited with discovering the river and claiming it and all the territory it drained for France (81). But it's not clear why Faulkner associates him specifically with two other Frenchmen. The actual party of Frenchmen and French-Canadians who, along with a group of Canadian Indians, traveled downriver to the Gulf of Mexico in 1682-1683 was much larger.
The history of Jackson in Requiem for a Nun includes a mention of "the captain" of a riverboat who puts a "gambler" off his ship (83). Steamboats began traveling on the Mississippi River and its tributaries around 1811.
Describing the unveiling of Jefferson's Confederate monument in 1900, Requiem for a Nun notes that "sons" of the "old men in gray" who attend the ceremony "had already died in blue coats in Cuba" - i.e. were young men from Yoknapatawpha who died serving in the U.S. Army during the Spanish-American War (189).
According to the history of Jackson in Requiem for a Nun, not long after the Mississippi River was explored to its mouth, "a thousand Spaniards come overland from the Atlantic Ocean"; over the next period of time "the Spaniard" alternates with "the Frenchman" as the main inhabitant of the place (81). Historically, this land was claimed and ruled over by Spain several different times between the 1540s and the later 18th century.
The cotton economy created what Requiem for a Nun calls "its own parasitic aristocracy," which includes "merchants and bankers" and "lawyers" as well as the planters who live "behind the columned porticoes of the plantation houses" (179).
