Colonel William C. Falkner moved from Tennessee to the Mississippi Delta in 1841 and married the daughter of a rich planter. J. Peder Zane of the News Observer wrote 21 September 1997 in an article commemorating the 100th anniversary of the birth of William Cuthbert Faulkner, the author, that Colonel Falkner "padded his holdings during the Civil War, probably providing contraband to Union soldiers." Following the war, Colonel Falkner built a railroad and won political office, in addition to writing commercially successful works such as "The White Rose of Memphis" and "The Little Brick Church, which blamed Northerners for the slave trade whle arguing that Southerners treated blacks "with the tenderest humanity." Zane said the colonel killed two men in duels and was killed by a rival on Oxford's main square in broad daylight in 1889.