Guide to Reading Letter Transcriptions
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| Textual Feature | Appearance |
|---|---|
| passage deleted with a strikethrough mark | |
| passage deleted by overwritten added letters | |
| passage added above the line | passage with added text above |
| passage added on the line | passage with added text inline |
| passage added in the margin | passage with text added in margin |
| handwritten addition to a typewritten letter | typed passage with added handwritten text |
| missing or unreadable text | missing text noted with "[illegible]" |
| uncertain transcriptions | word[?] |
| notes written by someone other than Willa Cather | Note in another's hand |
| printed letterhead text | printed text |
| text printed on postcards, envelopes, etc. | printed text |
| text of date and place stamps | stamped text |
| passage written by Cather on separate enclosure. | written text |
JO'M COSGRAVE II
2592 J.O. COSGRAVE © 1936
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1344.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1344
- Contents
- Document is one leaf with image of Christmas tree on recto. Handwritten message on verso of greeting card.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Carrie Miner Sherwood and Walter A. Sherwood1
- Date letter was written
- [December 1936]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
Cather dined with Mary Virginia Auld Mellen and Richard Mellen on Christmas Eve in 1936 (see #1351).
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- WCPM Collection, National Willa Cather Center, Red Cloud, NE
Person Annotations
Sherwood, Carrie Miner (1869-1971). Sherwood, Carrie Belle
Miner (1869-1972) Civic leader; Cather's friend. Born in Waukon,
IA, to James L. Miner and Julia Erickson Miner, Carrie Miner was the eldest
of their children. The family moved to Red Cloud, NE, in 1878, where the
Miner Brothers store became the largest in town. Cather remembered meeting
Carrie there. In 1884, Carrie, her mother, and siblings were confirmed in
the Catholic church. In 1888, she studied music at St. Mary’s Academy at
Notre Dame, IN. She married bank clerk Walter Sherwood in late 1889; they
had two sons. The Sherwoods travelled often in the West, and visited Europe
in 1930. They built a new house at 3rd and Seward streets in Red Cloud in
1908; Cather sometimes sent materials for Carrie to keep in its spacious
attics. Carrie Miner Sherwood led local Red Cross work during the two World
Wars, served on the Red Cloud school board and park commission, and was
active in the League of Women Voters and in the Ladies Guild of Grace
Episcopal Church. Cather corresponded with Carrie Miner Sherwood throughout
her life and dedicated My Ántonia to Carrie, model
for Frances Harling in the novel, and her sister Irene. Carrie was one of
Mildred Bennett’s chief sources for The World of Willa
Cather (1951), and was instrumental in setting up what is now the
Willa Cather Foundation in Red Cloud.
Sherwood, Walter Allen (1867-1941). Red Cloud banker; Carrie Miner Sherwood's husband. Walter Sherwood, born in Wisconsin, came with his family to Webster County in 1879. He worked in Silas Garber’s Farmers and Merchants bank in Red Cloud after his marriage to Carrie Miner in 1889; they had two sons, Clement Miner and Philip. After the failure of the Garber bank, Sherwood became cashier of the new People’s Bank, organized by his father-in-law, J.L. Miner, and eventually president of the bank.
Mellen, Mary Virginia Auld (1906-1982) (“Virginia,” “M.V.”).
Cather's niece. Born in Red Cloud, NE, to Jessica Cather Auld
and James William Auld, Mary Virginia graduated from Red Cloud High School
in 1924 and then spent a year at Dana Hall in Wellesley, MA, to qualify for
admission to Smith College in Northampton, MA. In 1929 she received an A.B.
in psychology from Smith and then moved to New York City, where she found
work at Lord & Taylor before telling her aunt of her arrival. In 1930,
probably with Willa Cather's help, she secured a position in the Circulation
Department of the New York Public Library. In 1931, she entered the
library's internal training school and in 1932 was assigned to the Tremont
branch library in the Bronx. After Mary Virginia’s parents divorced in 1933
Cather took a quasi-parental role. She paid for vacations and when, in 1935,
Mary Virginia married Richard (Dick) Mellen, a graduate of Harvard Medical
School and roommate of her brother William Thomas Auld at Amherst College,
she supervised wedding arrangements. After Dick was commissioned as a doctor
in the Air Force, Mary Virginia—much to Cather’s
regret—accompanied him to Chattanooga, TN, where he was assigned. In
Cather's will, Mary Virginia was designated a beneficiary of the literary
estate.
Mellen, Richard Hager (1909-1957) (“Dick”). American physician; Mary Virginia Auld Mellen’s husband. Born in Vermont to Philip Edwin and Mary Wheaton Hager Mellen, Dick Mellen graduated from Amherst College in 1931, where Cather’s nephew William Thomas Auld was his roommate, and from Harvard Medical School in 1935. The same year he began a residency at Bellevue Hospital in New York City and married Cather’s niece, Mary Virginia Auld. Cather praised Mary Virginia’s choice of this “Vermont boy” whose family were “just the nicest kind of Vermont people” (#2117). Trained as an orthopedic surgeon, he accepted a position as chief of orthopedic surgery at a hospital in Chattanooga, TN, in 1942, when the previous head left to serve in the military. Almost immediately thereafter, Mellen himself was commissioned as an officer in the Army Medical Corps, serving from 1942 to 1946. In 1946, he and other physicians who had developed expertise during the war founded the American Society for Surgery of the Hand. From 1946 until his death, he was a surgeon at Glockner-Penrose Hospital in Colorado Springs, CO.
Place Annotations
