By Brian D. Kowell
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2021, All Rights Reserved
Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Charger in December 2021.
“I want to be a writer like my great-granddaddy.”
–William Faulkner
William Clark Falkner was a lawyer, farmer, businessman, politician, soldier, poet, and great-grandfather to one of the greatest writers in American literary history. Born September 25, 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi, the writer William Faulkner never knew his great-grandfather. The young Faulkner spent his boyhood listening to stories told by his elders about the Civil War, slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Falkner family. Faulkner’s grandfather also told him about the exploits of William’s great-grandfather, William Clark Falkner – or as the family referred to him – the “Old Colonel.”
Continue reading “The Sound and the Fury: William Faulkner’s Great-Grandfather”