Sutpen, Thomas. The founder of the Sutpen family in Yoknapatawpha County. He was born in the mountain country of western Virginia in 1807, and around 1820 went to Haiti, where he married Eulalia Bon, the daughter of a French planter there. They had one son, Charles Bon. When Sutpen discovered that his wife had Negro blood he divorced her. He arrived in Jefferson in 1833, and built himself a large plantation in the northwestern part of Yoknapatawpha County on a hundred acres of land gotten from the Chickasaws. He married Ellen Coldfield of Jefferson in 1838. They had two children, Henry and Judith. His whole life was dedicated to establishing a family, and when his son disappeared he tried other means of getting a male heir. When he spurned Milly Jones because her child by him was female, he was killed by Wash Jones, Milly's grandfather. This was in 1869. Appears in Absolam, Absolam!

Note: Picture from the cover of Absolam, Absolam! ( Vintage Books Edition, Random House, New York, 1987.)