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).

Pasteur, Louis (1822-1895). French chemist and biologist. Born in Jura, France, son of a tanner, Pasteur managed, with some difficulty, to earn degrees in chemistry and physics. He taught chemistry at the University of Strasbourg, where he married Marie Laurent in 1849. They moved to Paris where he taught at several institutions, including the Sorbonne; he established the Pasteur Institute in 1887. Pasteur was particularly known for his work on fermentation, which led to the study of microorganisms causing infectious diseases; his successful treatment of rabies in humans in 1885 was well-publicized. He was elected to the French Academy in 1881.

Dickens, Charles (1812-1870). British writer and editor. Born in Portsmouth, England, Dickens spent part of his boyhood in rural Kent before the family moved to London, where his father was incarcerated in a debtors’ prison. Eleven-year-old Charles was put to work pasting labels on bottles, an experience which developed his sense of social justice. After time at a bad school, he became first a legal clerk and then a journalist reporting on the courts and politics. His Sketches by Boz (1836) and serially published Pickwick Papers (book publication 1837) established him as a successful fiction writer. He became the most popular novelist in England and much of the English-speaking world, drawing on many of his own experiences in such novels as David Copperfield (1850). In 1836 he married Catherine Hogarth, with whom he had ten children; they separated after he fell in love with a sixteen-year-old actress in 1857. Dickens toured the U.S. twice; his readings from his own work in England and abroad were very popular.

Haggard, Henry Rider (1856-1925) (“H. Rider”, “Rider”). British novelist. Born in England, Rider Haggard was sent by his father to British colonial Africa in 1872, after he failed preparation for careers in the army or the Foreign Office. His fiction was deeply influenced by the explorers and adventurers he met in Africa, and many of his most popular adventure novels, such as King Solomon’s Mines (1885), She (1887) and their sequels, were set there. Haggard, who returned to Britain permanently in 1882, was also interested in spiritualism and psychic phenomena, interests reflected in his novel Cleopatra (1889) and in other works.

Cather, Roscoe (1877-1945) (“Ross”). Cather’s brother. Roscoe was born in Virginia, the second child and oldest son of Charles and Virginia Cather. After graduating from Red Cloud (NE) High School in 1895, he taught country school for two years, attended the University of Nebraska in Lincoln for one year (1897-1898), taught high school in Carlton, NE, and Oxford, NE, and finally became superintendent of schools in Fullerton, NE. There he met fellow teacher Meta Schaper, whom he married in 1907. They relocated to Lander, WY, in 1909, where he opened an abstract office and where their three children, Virginia and twins Margaret and Elizabeth, were born. In 1921, they moved to Casper, WY, where Roscoe became president of the Wyoming Trust Company, and in 1937 to Colusa, CA, where Roscoe and his brother Douglass had acquired a controlling interest in the First Savings Bank of Colusa. Roscoe served as president of the bank until his death. Willa visited Roscoe and his family in Wyoming several times and shared important travel experiences with them, including a 1926 trip to New Mexico with Roscoe, Meta, and their children and a 1941 San Francisco vacation with Roscoe and Meta. She also relied on him to handle family-related business as well as personal financial matters, and he was one of her chief correspondents throughout her life. Roscoe served as a prototype for one of the twin brothers in the Templeton family in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932).

Cather, Charles Douglas (1880-1938) (“Douglass”). Cather’s brother. Born in Virginia and raised in Red Cloud, NE, Charles was third child and second son of Charles and Virginia Cather. As an adolescent, Douglass Cather helped his father supervise rented farm properties and worked as a messenger for the local Burlington & Missouri Railroad office. In 1897 he left Red Cloud for a position in Sterling, CO, and then took a position with at the Cheyenne, WY, office of the Burlington Railroad. In 1908 he traveled to Mexico, an experience that his sister gave to Emil Bergson in O Pioneers! (1913). By 1910 he was working for the Santa Fe railroad and living in Winslow, AZ, where Willa Cather visited him in 1912. He later achieved success in the oil business in California. Although he never married, Cather notes that during the last six or seven years of his life he had a relationship with Dorothy Rogers. Douglass visited Cather in New York City in December of 1937. His death in June 1938 left her devastated. Douglass served as a prototype for one of the twin brothers in the Templeton family in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932) and Hector the messenger boy brother in “The Best Years” (1948). His years working for the Burlington also inspired Cather’s many railroad worker characters in her novels, including Song of the Lark (1915) and The Professor’s House (1925). Few letters from this important sibling relationship have survived.

Thayer, John Milton (1820-1906). Nebraska governor. Born in Massachusetts, Thayer began a legal career after graduating from Brown University in 1841 and married Mary T. Allen in 1842; the couple had six children. The family moved to Omaha, NE, in 1860. During the Civil War, he served as colonel of the 1st Nebraska Infantry regiment, fought in many engagements, and was promoted to major general. After the war he served as one of the first U.S. senators from Nebraska (1867-1871), as governor of Wyoming Territory (1875-1879), and as the seventh governor of Nebraska (1886-1892); he then retired from political life.

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).

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.

Adelsheim, Nellie (1872-after 1940). Cather’s childhood acquaintance. Born and reared in Iowa, Nellie began coming to Red Cloud in 1886 on extended visits to her aunt, Fannie Adelsheim Wiener. While there, she was part of the same social set as Cather and Mary and Margaret Miner, attending school and performing with them in locally produced plays. Cather observed her flirtations with local young men, but in early 1891, Nellie married New York City-born David Markstein, who may have lived in her home town of Sioux City. By 1898, they had had four children, David had died, and Nellie was living in New York City. She apparently remained there, living with her children, until her death.

Jester, Mrs. Cather’s acquaintance. Albert H. Jester, a pharmacist, and his wife moved to Red Cloud, NE, in 1888 and left in 1889. Both were singers and active in the musical life of the town.

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.

Houghton, Clara Becker (1860-1894). Cather's Red Cloud acquaintance. Born in Buffalo, NY, the eldest daughter of Anson U. Becker and his wife Catherine D. Becker, Clara Becker and her family moved to Red Cloud, NE, in 1878.  Clara and her siblings, including her sister Sarah (Sadie) Becker, were musically inclined and active in the social and cultural life of Red Cloud and its Baptist church. The family moved to Lincoln, NE, late in 1886. In 1889 Clara married Wilfred Houghton of Red Cloud. The couple moved to Lincoln, NE, early in 1890, where they had one child, Alice, in November 1893. Clara died five months later in Lincoln; her remains were interred in Buffalo.

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.

Miner, Charles Hugh (1871-1954) (“Hugh,” “Hughie”). Red Cloud businessman and postmaster. Born in Iowa, eldest and only surviving son of James L. and Julia Erickson Miner, Charles Hugh Miner was named for his uncle Hugh Miner and came with his family to Red Cloud, NE, in 1878. Hugh was educated in Red Cloud and at a business college in Notre Dame, IN. He married Cather’s cousin Alfretta “Retta” Ayre in 1896, and they had four children, Jennie, Margaret, James, and Charles Hugh. In 1917 Hugh sold the Miner Bros. store and concentrated on farming and ranching. In 1936 he was appointed postmaster of Red Cloud. Cather portrayed the Miner family in My Ántonia (1918) as the Harlings, whose only son is Charley Harling.

Stevens, Georgianna (1857-after 1928) (“Georgie”). Cather’s friend. Born in Massachusetts, Georgianna was the younger sister of Helen Stevens Stowell. She lived in Boston, MA, and visited the Stowells several times in the mid-1880s when they lived in Nebraska and Red Cloud. Cather asked after Georgie in several of her early letters, and Georgianna put the Stowells in touch with Cather in the late 1920s.