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 |
This is for the fund3 for planting trees in the cemetary. I’ve just learned that there is such a fund, for the “Commercial Advertiser”4 address my paper so carelessly that I get only three or four a month5. Postoffice wrote me their carriers could not deliver papers so indistinctly addressed. Would you please speak to the editor6? I’ve written them repeatedly, but they pay no attention.
Hastily WillieI am just getting over a long stretch of influenza—six weeks. But I want to write you a long letter soon. I won't write you about the sad things. I think of you and Mary7 and love you, as the old song says.
Always WillieInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1447.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1447
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Carrie Miner Sherwood1
- Date letter was written
- March 28 [1939]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The cemetery tree fund drive mentioned in this letter was written about in the Red Cloud newspaper in March 1939.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- WCPM Collection, National Willa Cather Center, Red Cloud, NE
Individual Annotations
The Red Cloud Commercial Advertiser listed contributors to the fund in their 10 March 1939 issue.
The Red Cloud Commercial Advertiser was published three times a week at this time.
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.
Smith, Walter B. (1884-1962). Red Cloud newspaper editor and publisher. Born in Colorado, Walter Smith became a printer after high school. He and his wife Velma, who were married around 1915, moved to Red Cloud, NE, before 1920. Walter Smith worked on local newspapers before taking over the last survivor, the Red Cloud Commercial Advertiser, which went from a weekly to three-times-a-week publication by the late 1930s. Willa Cather subscribed to the Red Cloud Commercial Advertiser, but complained that it did not come regularly; there is no indication she knew Walter Smith personally.
Creighton, Mary S. Miner (1873-1968). Clubwoman; Cather’s
friend from childhood. Born in Iowa, Mary Miner was the second
daughter of James and Julia Miner, neighbors of the Cather family in Red
Cloud, NE. Willa Cather later recalled that when she first moved into town
with her family and enrolled in school in 1885, “Margie Miner was so jolly I
wanted awfully to know her.” They became lifelong friends and
correspondents, and Mary’s sisters Irene and Carrie were equally close to
Cather. Mary Miner wed local physician E. A. Creighton in 1900 and lived the
rest of her life in Red Cloud. She was the prototype for Julia Harling in
My Ántonia (1918).
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Red Cloud Commercial Advertiser
