Stowell, Helen Louise Stevens (1856-?). Cather’s Red Cloud friend. Helen Stevens was born in Massachusetts. After her marriage to Eugene A. Stowell in 1880, they moved to Webster County, NE, where they had a sheep ranch. Their only child, Alice, was born in 1882. They visited frequently in Red Cloud, where they were part of the Charles Cather family's social circle, and wintered in the town for several years. In late 1887 they moved to California, then eventually back to Middlesex County, MA, near Boston. Helen Stowell, widowed in the 1920s, still lived there with her daughter in 1940. Cather’s earliest surviving letters are to Mrs. Stowell, and she wrote again when Charles Cather died in 1928.

Curran, John F. (1840-1920). Irish-American teacher. Born in Ireland, and educated in Dublin, Curran came to the U.S. in 1864, settling in Pennsylvania, where he married Jennie A. Cook around 1870. They had two sons, Walter and John Tyndall, both born in Iowa, where he was a teacher. Curran became principal of the Superior, NE, public schools in 1885; in 1888 he became principal and superintendent of the Red Cloud, NE, schools, where he taught and encouraged Cather. He left Red Cloud in 1889, teaching in Montana and other places in Nebraska, returning to Blue Hill, NE, north of Red Cloud, in 1893. Cather stayed with the Currans when she went to a dance in Blue Hill in early 1896, where she met Anna Gayhart, a teacher there who lived in the Curran household. Curran left Blue Hill in 1897, returned to Montana, then moved to Seattle, WA, where his younger son had settled, and where he lived in a Presbyterian home for the elderly for his last few years.

Homer (late 8th-early 7th centuries BCE). Legendary Greek epic poet or poets. Born in Ionia, in Greece, according to ancient traditions, Homer was believed to be the poet who composed the lliad and the Odyssey. Many scholars believe the epics were based on centuries of oral tradition, possibly codified and written down or dictated by a poet now identified as Homer. Ancient traditions say Homer was blind, and that he died on Ios. Cather probably read Homer in translation in 1889, when she first refers to him, as she was only beginning the study of Greek.

Swinburne, Algernon Charles (1837-1909). British poet and critic. Born to a British naval officer and an aristocratic mother, Swinburne was educated at Eton College and Oxford University. Influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites, Swinburne was early recognized as a major poetic talent but was also criticized for tackling controversial political and sexual themes. Cather first read Swinburne as a teenager in Red Cloud, NE, and in 1896 in the Home Journal, she wrote that “the man who wrote ‘Atalanta in Calydon’,” the 1865 poem that made Swinburne famous, was “the only English living poet who really deserved” to be British poet laureate, but she conceded he was “shut out on erotic grounds.”

Dupin, Amantine Lucile Aurore (1804-1876) (“George Sand”). French novelist. Born in Paris, Aurore, as she was known, grew up on her grandmother’s estate in Nohant, Berry, France. In 1822 she married Casimir Dudevant; they had two children before she left him in 1831, obtaining a legal separation in 1835. She began a series of affairs, first with Jules Sandeau, from whom she took her pen name, George Sand; her most notable affair was with composer Frédéric Chopin (1837-1847). Her novel, Indiana (1832), made her famous, and was followed by many more, some more or less autobiographical, as well as various memoirs. Cather read Sand as a young woman and kept an engraving of Sand in her apartment in later years.

Bloom, Mary P. Treat (1847-after 1900). American wife and mother; Cather’s acquaintance. Born in Maine, Mary grew up in Wisconsin, where she married William J. Bloom, a Civil War veteran, in 1868. They had two sons. The family moved to Superior, NE, in 1879, where William Bloom co-founded the first bank, and served as its cashier. Mary Bloom was part of the social circles that included teacher John F. Curran and his family and was one of those exchanging visits to Red Cloud, NE, while the Currans lived there in the late 1880s. Widowed in the 1890s, she moved to the Hyde Park area of Chicago, IL, where she lived with her sons.

Briggs, Alice Cary Brooks (1849-1922). Clubwoman; Cather’s acquaintance. Born in Iowa, Alice married Abbington James Briggs in 1867; they had one son. Alice taught music and her husband was cashier in a bank. They moved to Nuckolls County, NE, in the early 1880s where A. J. Briggs was a banker in Superior, NE. Alice was part of the social circle that included the John Curran family, and was one of those exchanging visits to Red Cloud, NE, while the Currans lived there in the late 1880s. She was the first president of Nebraska Grand chapter of the P.E.O. from 1890-1892, and was president of the Supreme Grand Chapter in 1893; her sister-in-law, Hattie Briggs Fousquet, was one of the founders of the P.E.O. Sisterhood. The Briggs family later moved to Los Angeles, CA, while A. J. was a partner in a Nevada gold mine; he later managed a farm near the city.

Curran, Jennie Cook (1849-1911). Wife of John F. Curran’s wife. Born in Pennsylvania, a daughter of a stone cutter, Jennie Cook married Irish immigrant John F. Curran around 1870. They had two sons, Walter and John Tyndall, both born in Iowa, where her husband was a teacher. The family came to Superior, NE, in 1885, where they were popular in the social circles of the town, as they were in Red Cloud, NE, where they moved in 1888. When John Curran left to teach in Montana in 1889, Jennie and their sons remained in Red Cloud, rejoining Curran when he came to teach in Edgar, NE, in 1890. They moved to Blue Hill, NE, in 1893; Cather stayed with the family after a dance there in 1896, where she met teacher Anna Gayhart, who lived in the Curran household. Jennie Curran followed her husband to Montana after they left Blue Hill in 1897, and then to Seattle, WA, where she died.

Wiener, Fannie Meyer (1853-1893). Red Cloud civic and social leader. Born in France, Fannie came to the U.S. with her family, which settled in Pittsburgh, PA. She married Charles F. Wiener of Chicago, IL, in the late 1870s, and moved with him to Red Cloud, NE, in 1883. They had no children, but her nieces and nephews made frequent long visits. When the various church Ladies Aid societies quarreled about how to help the poor, Fannie Wiener was able to unite the women of the town in the Red Cloud Benevolent Association, in part because, being Jewish, she was outside of sectarian disputes. She fell ill early in 1893 and underwent several surgeries; she was taken to Chicago to convalesce, but died and was buried there. Cather portrayed Charles and Fanny Wiener as the Rosens in “Old Mrs. Harris.”

Garber, Lyra Wheeler (1855-1921). Red Cloud resident. Born in Georgia, Lyra moved with her family to Illinois in 1856 and to California in 1859, where her father kept hotels in Nevada County; she first met Silas Garber there in 1866 when he was visiting his elder brother Jacob. Lyra reportedly attended a convent school in Grass Valley, CA, and a finishing school in San Francisco. In 1875, when Silas Garber was governor of Nebraska, he returned to Grass Valley and married Lyra Wheeler. After his term was up in 1878, the couple moved to Red Cloud, NE. Widowed in 1905, Lyra stayed there until 1912. In 1914 settled in Grangeville, ID, where a sister lived, and cut her ties to Nebraska. In 1915, she married Swan Anderson, a considerably-younger bank cashier. They moved to Oregon in 1918, where she died. Cather observed Silas and Lyra Garber during their Red Cloud years and made them the prototypes for Daniel and Marian Forrester in A Lost Lady (1923).

Cather, Charles Fectigue (1848-1928). Cather’s father. Charles Fectigue (possibly Fectique) Cather was born in the Back Creek Valley of Virginia, north of Winchester. His family were sheep raisers who were largely, but not entirely, Union supporters during the Civil War. He married Mary Virginia Seibert Boak, daughter of Confederate supporters, in 1872. In 1883 he and his family followed his parents, William and Caroline Cather, and brother George to Webster County in Nebraska, where various cousins and uncles had also settled. Initially he ran a ranch in the county but soon moved his family into the town of Red Cloud, where he had an insurance and real estate business. Four of his children, Willa, Roscoe, Charles, and Jessica, were born in Virginia, while three, James, Elsie, and John, were born in Nebraska. Cather’s relationship with her father was very warm: she made regular visits to her parents in Red Cloud and especially enjoyed her father’s letters expressing appreciation of her novels. A week after she concluded a visit to her ailing father in Red Cloud, he died of heart disease. He served as the prototype for Hillary Templeton in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932).

Higby, Anson (1862-1926). Red Cloud clerk, businessman. Born in New York, Higby moved from Beatrice, NE, to Red Cloud before 1880. He worked as a clerk and bookkeeper and in 1882 he married Bernice Sherwood, sister of Walter Sherwood; she died in late 1883 after giving birth to a daughter, also named Bernice. Anson married Jennie Rowe in 1887. He resigned from Silas Garber’s Farmers and Merchants bank in 1891 to move to Deadwood, SD, then later to Basin, WY. Higby was probably one of the group of young men from whom Cather said she learned more about Anna Sadilek, prototype for the title character of My Ántonia (1918).

Garber, Silas (1833-1905). American governor. Born into a large family in Ohio, Garber followed family members to settle in northeastern Iowa. There, in 1857 he married Rosella Dana. In 1860, their son William Seward Garber was born and in 1862 Rosella died. Garber enlisted in the Union army at the outbreak of the Civil War, rising to the rank of captain. On a visit to family in California in 1866, he met twelve year-old Lyra Wheeler, whom he married eight years later. In 1870 Garber led a band of settlers to open land in south-central Nebraska, founding the town of Red Cloud on his homestead and in 1874 he was elected governor of Nebraska. After serving two terms, he returned to Red Cloud, where he and Lyra lived just outside town. The grove of trees surrounding their house was a popular place for summer picnics and dances, which Cather attended. Garber founded the Farmers and Merchants Bank in Red Cloud in 1886; it failed in the Panic of 1893, and Garber’s health and fortune slowly declined. Cather knew Garber as the town’s most prominent citizen, and she portrayed him as Captain Forrester in A Lost Lady (1923).

Wiener, Charles F. (1847-1917). American businessman. Born in Bohemia, Wiener came to the U.S. with his family in 1860; he enlisted in the Navy during the Civil War, then joined his family in Chicago, IL. He married Fannie Meyer; they had no children. In 1883 Wiener bought a clothing store in Red Cloud, NE, where they became prominent citizens; for a time during Cather’s childhood they lived across the street from the Charles F. Cather home. Wiener was elected mayor of Red Cloud in 1893, the year his wife died, and county commissioner in 1896. In 1897 he sold his store and moved to New York, living with an elder brother and going into the real estate business with a nephew; he remarried in 1906. Cather regarded Wiener as a friend from her youth until his death, visiting him while they both lived in New York; she portrayed him and Fanny Wiener as the Rosens in “Old Mrs. Harris.”

Kaley, David H. (1859-1951). Red Cloud resident. Born in Ohio, David Kaley came to Webster County, NE, to join his brothers and other members of his extended family. He farmed northeast of Red Cloud, NE, before moving into the town around 1901. He married Dora Henderson in 1896; they had no children.

Beachy, Peter A. (1862-1945). Red Cloud clerk. Born in Pennsylvania, Beachy came to Red Cloud, NE, around 1882, working in several of the town banks, including Silas Garber’s Farmers and Merchants bank, where he was cashier by 1892. In 1894 he left Red Cloud to work for R.E. Moore in Lincoln, NE. He moved to Chicago in 1900, where he married Susan Emma Fahrney, whose father had made a fortune in patent medicines; he managed his father-in-law’s estate. The Beachys moved to San Diego in the early 1930s.

Miner, James L. (1847-1905) (“J.L.”). Red Cloud merchant. Born in Ohio, James Miner came with his family to Iowa, where he married Julia Erickson in 1868. They had eight children, five of whom survived to adulthood, Carrie, Mary, Margaret, Irene, and Hugh, who were Cather’s childhood friends in Red Cloud, NE, where the family moved in 1878. James and his brother Hugh Miner started the Miner Bros. store, which became one of the largest in the region. They also bought a large cattle ranch on the Republican River west of Red Cloud and started the People’s Bank of Red Cloud in 1893, when other town banks had failed. Miner was a Catholic and a Democrat in a predominantly Protestant and Republican area; Cather drew on this in her portrayal of R.E. Dillon in “Two Friends” (1932). Miner also appears as Christian Harling in My Ántonia (1918), the distant father of the Harling children.

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).

Wagner, Richard (1813-1883). German composer. Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig, Germany. He taught himself to play the piano and the principles of composition, partly by studying the scores of Beethoven's works, and was also deeply influenced by his reading of Shakespeare, Schiller, and Goethe. His early operas before Rienzi (1842) were unsuccessful. In the wake of its success he began to develop his more characteristic style. Although The Flying Dutchman (1843), Tannhäuser (1845), and Lohengrin (1850) were popular, critics were often hostile, and his involvement with the Revolution of 1848 in Germany forced him to flee into exile in Zurich, where he wrote on social and musical issues, and composed the poem, The Ring of the Nibelung, upon which his four Ring operas were based. The difficulty of staging these titanic works led him to put them aside for such works as Tristan and Isolde (1859). His financial difficulties were alleviated when Ludvig II of Bavaria became his patron. Wagner toured Europe to raise money for a new kind of theater at Bayreuth, which would be capable of presenting the Ring; the work was first given in its entirety at Bayreuth in 1876. His last work was Parsifal (1882). Cather was an avid opera fan, and references to his works appear throughout her works, most prominently “A Wagner Matinee” (1904) and The Song of the Lark (1915). She recommended Wagner’s autobiography My Life to Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, praising it as “all action” (#0219), and wrote a preface for a 1925 edition of Gertrude Hall’s Wagnerian Romances (1925).

Rubinstein, Anton (1829-1894). Russian pianist and composer. Born in a village near Odessa in Russia, Rubinstein moved to Moscow; his mother was his first piano teacher. His second teacher took him to Paris, where the nine-year-old boy came to the notice of Liszt and Chopin; unable to enter the Paris Conservatory, his teacher took him on tour in Europe and Russia to raise money. In 1844 he went to Berlin, where Mendelssohn took an interest in him. Returning to Russia, he played and taught in Saint Petersburg, where he had imperial patronage in founding the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1862. His reputation as a virtuoso was established in the 1850s; a grueling concert tour of the U.S. in 1872-73 made him financially secure, but he refused to repeat it. After his death, Cather commented upon Rubinstein’s career and his character in her newspaper column, telling a story of how he responded graciously to an old Frenchwoman in Nebraska who wrote asking him to resolve a fingering problem in a Liszt composition.

Pythagoras (c. 569-475 BCE). Greek mathematician and philosopher. Born on the island of Samos, Pythagoras was educated there and at his father’s home in Tyre before studying mathematics in Egypt. Returning to Samos, he set up a school, the semicircle, where mathematical and philosophical questions were discussed, while reportedly living in a cave outside the city. In Croton, Italy, he set up a mystical and mathematical communal society; because of secrecy, none of Pythagoras’s writings have survived, although his name is attached to such ideas as the Pythagorean theorem.

Seymour, Elizabeth (c. 1859-1934) (“Bess,” “Bessie”). Cather’s cousin. Bess Seymour was born in Virginia to Sarah Boak (the elder sister of Willa Cather’s mother) and her first husband, Joseph D. Seymour. In 1883, Bess moved with Willa Cather’s family to Webster County, NE. Seymour lived in the Cather family home from 1883 to 1904, when she moved to the Webster County farm of her half brother, Will Andrews. Cather used her cousin’s name as a byline for the story “The Burglar’s Christmas” (1906), and it has been suggested that she served as a model for Aunt Tillie in The Song of the Lark (1915). Cather frequently mentions in letters to other family members that she received long letters from Seymour full of family news, and she urged her sister Elsie Cather to care for Seymour during her final illness and sent money to pay medical expenses.

Ferris, Mollie (c. 1864-1941). Cather family friend in Red Cloud. Ferris was a close friend of Cather’s mother. Willa Cather and Ferris served jointly as godmothers when Cather’s niece Helen Louise Cather was christened in Red Cloud, NE, in 1918. When Ferris died, Cather contributed money for a stained glass window in her honor in Grace Episcopal Church in Red Cloud.

Crane, Mr. American railroad employee.

Welch, Arthur J. (1861-1944). American train despatcher. Born in New York, Welch worked his way up to the position of line superintendent for the Burlington Railroad when he was based in Red Cloud, NE, from 1885 to 1889. By 1900 he was working as a railroad agent in Memphis, TN, then as a train despatcher in Alliance, NE, from around 1910 into the 1920s. He and his wife Theadore, who he married in 1882, had a daughter, Theda, who was born in 1883. The couple retired to Florida, where they died. In an 1889 letter Cather mentions Welch and other railroad employees in Red Cloud.

Jhonston, Miss. Cather’s acquaintance. No unmarried woman named Jhonston in her teens or twenties is listed in the 1885 census of Red Cloud; John I. and Mary E. Johnston of neighboring Nuckolls County had three unmarried daughters, Ida, Alice, and Gertrude, in this age group, who may have visited Red Cloud in this period.