After the Civil War Colonel John Sartoris, with a partner named Redlaw part of the time, builds a railroad that bisects Yoknapatawpha from north to south. Until the automobile age begins in the early 20th century, this is the main route by which Jefferson is connected to the larger world, a role it plays in many of the Yoknapatawpha fictions.
The railroad line that runs from north to south straight down the middle of Yoknapatawpha on both the maps that Faulkner made was built in the decade after the Civil War by Colonel John Sartoris. The story of how he built it is told, briefly and with a few variations, in three Yoknapatawpha novels, starting with the first, Flags in the Dust. Will Falls reminds the Colonel's son how Sartoris rode "up and down the survey with a saddlebag of money night and day, keepin' jest one cross tie ahead of the po'house" (22).
A "placid mountain of a woman," I.O. Snopes' wife spends her days in the porch swing of their "small frame house" - "not doing anything: just swinging" (235). (In the later novel The Town Faulkner makes I.O. a bigamist; the evidence of the later texts suggests that the Mrs. I.O. Snopes in this first Yoknapatawpha novel is the woman he marries second.)
"Negress" is not a term the narrator uses for any other female Negro, so it's not clear why he uses it the one time he mentions the black maid at the Beard boarding house. She is helping Mrs. Beard serve breakfast at the boarding house. She is also described as "slatternly" (324).
