According to Requiem for a Nun's account of the modern South, the daughters of the German blacksmith who deserted from the Union Army to become one of the carpetbaggers who preyed on Jefferson in time "become matriarchs and grandmothers of the town's new aristocracy" (183).
Requiem for a Nun refers to three generations of descendants from the "Ratcliffe" who first arrived in the settlement that became Jefferson, and notes how over that time the name "lost the 'c' and the final 'fe' too" (13). Although he is not singled out in this text, the latest descendant is V.K. Ratliff, one of Faulkner's favorite characters - although in the Requiem passage Faulkner seems to have forgotten that his name still has both "f"s.
Mrs. Harriss's mother is referred to as her husband’s "own life’s one monogamous love" (150). (Based on other Yoknapatawpha fictions, this woman is Mrs. Backus, but that name is not used in "Knight's Gambit.")
In "Knight's Gambit" Gavin Stevens learns that Max Harriss is "well known" to the "taxi-drivers" in the area of Memphis around the Greenbury Hotel (208).
In comparing Mr. Harriss to Huey Long in "Knight's Gambit," Charles Mallison describes how the politician "made himself founder owner and supporter of what his uncle said was one of the best literary magazines anywhere," probably not "even caring what the people who wrote and edited it" produced (241). Faulkner is referring to a real magazine, the Louisiana Progress.
Although Sebastian Gualdres’s Mississippi friends in "Knight's Gambit" include "all sorts of people," the Whitmanian type tends to dominate the description of them: "out-of-doors men, usually bachelors" (174). The range of occupations they are identified with is wide: from "farmers" to "mechanics"; "a civil engineer," "a professional horse-and-mule trader," "two young men on the highway maintenance crew" and "a locomotive fireman" (174).
In Intruder in the Dust the white people who crowd Jefferson's main streets in anticipation of the arrival of a lynch mob from Beat Four are from everywhere in Yoknapatawpha except Beat Four. It begins to form on Sunday morning, with a small group made up of young men from town.
Though called "Owl-by-Night" the first time he is mentioned (363), this Chickasaw is more often referred to in "A Courtship" as "Owl-at-Night" (364). He is one of the young men who were interested in Herman Basket's sister - until they realized that Ikkemotubbe wanted her. After that, he willingly helps Ikkemotubbe with his efforts to win the young woman.
