Oxford’s Olden Days: Faulkner’s Lifelong Hunting Companion, Sheriff Ike Roberts

Many of you may have seen a famous photograph of William Faulkner and his hunting companions.

In that photograph is a large, round-faced man in a wide brim black Stetson hat. He is the long-time Sheriff of Lafayette County and avid hunter, Ike Roberts. Papa Ike, as he was known to my friends, his grandchildren, Walter, Larry, and Wilson Roberts, and their sister Tricia Roberts Nelson and first cousin John Roberts, was a true Oxford resident that may have been the basis of a Faulkner character and the source of stories that he wrote about in his novels.

Jack Lamar Mayfield is a fifth generation Oxonian, whose family came to Oxford shortly after the Chickasaw Cession of 1832, and he is the third generation of his family to graduate from the University of Mississippi. He is a former insurance company executive and history instructor at Marshall Academy in Holly Springs, South Panola High School in Batesvile and the Oxford campus of Northwest Community College.

In addition to his weekly blog in HottyToddy.com Oxford’s Olden Days, Mayfield is also the author of an Images of America series book titled Oxford and Ole Miss published in 2008 for the Oxford-Lafayette County Heritage Foundation. The Foundation is responsible for restoring the post-Civil War home of famed Mississippi statesman, L.Q.C. Lamar and is now restoring the Burns Belfry, the first African American Church in Oxford.