As Justin pointed out, the New York Times reports today that the Mississippi plantation diary of a wealthy slave-owning Mississippian has been found that Faulkner consulted often to find names and incidents to use in his work. The son of Faulkner’s friend recalls that when reading the diary, “Faulkner became very angry. He would curse the man and take notes and curse the man and take more notes.”

I can relate.

For about three years, I worked on a never-finished manuscript about my mother’s family. While I went back and forth, for part of the time I wrote it as a fictionalization, so I made up new names for all my relatives. To help, I consulted a family genealogy book called The Descendants of Robert Kay. Robert Kay was my great-(x7 or 8)-grandfather on the side of my mother’s mother’s mother’s mother, one Miss Viola Verona Kay King (pictured: one of her sons). Robert Kay was himself a wealthy, slave-owning cotton farmer in the 18th century. The first few pages of the book tell about how he came to Anderson County, South Carolina (where my mother grew up) from Virginia.

All sides of my family have lived in the South as far back as anyone can trace. But it’s one thing to figure that my ancestors probably owned slaves, and quite another to see a list like the one unceremoniously provided on page 9 of The Descendants of Robert Kay. Here’s an excerpt from the inventory of his property up for sale:

One Girl Silvia seven years of age $250.00

One Girl Winifred five years of age 150.00

One Girl Delilah 80.00

One Large Iron Pot 5.00

One ditto 3.00

One Pot and Skillet 3.00

One kittle, frying pan, and three pairs of pot hooks 2.75

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