Gere, Mariel Clapham (1874-1960). Cather’s university friend; a teacher. Mariel Gere, eldest daughter of Charles H. and Mariel C. Gere, born in Lincoln, NE, entered the University of Nebraska's prep school in the same year Cather did. She and her sisters visited Cather several times in Red Cloud, NE. Both were members of the Union Literary Society until Gere joined the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority in 1892. Gere graduated in the science course and taught chemistry at Lincoln High until 1941. She also served on the Lincoln City Library board for many years. Cather and Gere remained friends and correspondents; Gere defended Cather from accusations that she had been arrogant and friendless during her university years.

Gere, Ellen Bladen (1875-1941) (“Ned” or “Neddums”). Cather's friend. Ellen Gere, the second daughter of Charles H. and Mariel C. Gere, was born in Lincoln, NE. She visited Cather in Red Cloud, NE, with her sisters, and Cather included her in her correspondence in the 1890s. Ellen Gere entered the University of Nebraska in Lincoln around 1892, but graduated with the class of 1899. In the 1920s she adopted two children, believing, with her friend Dorothy Canfield, that women who wanted to be mothers did not have to be married.

Gere, Frances C. (1877-1965). Cather's friend. Frances Gere, the youngest child of Charles H. and Mariel C. Gere, was born in Lincoln, NE. She entered the University of Nebraska in 1894 and graduated in 1898. Like her sisters, Mariel and Ellen, she joined the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority and lived in Lincoln the remainder of her life.

Haggard, Althea B. Roberts (1874-1960) (“Allie”). Cather's university friend. Althea Roberts was the second of the four daughters of Aurelius and Lizzie Roberts of Rising City, NE. She entered the University of Nebraska in Lincoln in 1890, joined the Kappa Gamma sorority, and graduated with Willa Cather in the class of 1895. She married Corwin R. Haggard around 1897; their first child, born in 1897, died in infancy. The couple moved to Tulsa, OK, after 1910, where they were still living in 1940.

Ames, Mary (“Maysie,” “Mayzie”) Henderson (1874-mid 1920s). Friend and classmate of Cather; librarian. Maysie Ames was born in Illinois to John A. and Elizabeth Ames. The family moved to Lincoln, NE, in the early 1880s; by 1891 they were living at 1020 H Street, across the street from Cather’s rooming-house at 1019 H. Ames and Cather were both members of the Union Literary Society from their first year at the University of Nebraska, and she was part of the circle of friends that included Cather, the Geres, the Broadys, Althea Roberts, and Olivia Pound. Ames became a member of the Fem Bot, the women students’ answer to Roscoe Pound and the Sem Bot, the all-male Botanical Seminar. She and classmates Flora Bullock and Mariel Gere were among the first students in the library cataloging courses offered by university librarians Mary L. Jones and Mary Esther Robbins in 1895, and she became assistant librarian at the university, with special responsibility for the engineering and scientific books. She resigned in 1904 to become librarian of the Grand Island city library from 1905-1909. By 1923 the university’s alumni association had lost touch with her, although she was reported as deceased in their 1927 alumni directory.

Gere, Ellen Bladen (1875-1941) (“Ned” or “Neddums”). Cather's friend. Ellen Gere, the second daughter of Charles H. and Mariel C. Gere, was born in Lincoln, NE. She visited Cather in Red Cloud, NE, with her sisters, and Cather included her in her correspondence in the 1890s. Ellen Gere entered the University of Nebraska in Lincoln around 1892, but graduated with the class of 1899. In the 1920s she adopted two children, believing, with her friend Dorothy Canfield, that women who wanted to be mothers did not have to be married.

Haggard, Althea B. Roberts (1874-1960) (“Allie”). Cather's university friend. Althea Roberts was the second of the four daughters of Aurelius and Lizzie Roberts of Rising City, NE. She entered the University of Nebraska in Lincoln in 1890, joined the Kappa Gamma sorority, and graduated with Willa Cather in the class of 1895. She married Corwin R. Haggard around 1897; their first child, born in 1897, died in infancy. The couple moved to Tulsa, OK, after 1910, where they were still living in 1940.

Alvary, Max (1856-1898). German opera singer. Born Maximilian Achenbach in Germany, Max Alvary performed as a tenor in Wagnerian opera in Germany, England, and the U.S. He was a member of the Damrosch Opera Company when it performed in Omaha in December 1895; Willa Cather did not attend any of these performances.

Weston, Herbert Towle (1876-1951) (“Bert”). Cather’s Nebraska acquaintance. Born in Lincoln, NE, Bert Weston was raised in Beatrice, NE, by his father, J.B. Weston, one of the town’s founding settlers and most prominent citizens, and mother Helen Towle Weston. His sister Katherine was Cather’s University of Nebraska classmate, and Cather met Bert when she visited her friend in Beatrice. After graduating from Beatrice High School, Bert Weston’s parents sent him to the Michigan Military Academy in Orchard Lake, MI, in 1893. After graduating from MMA in 1895, Weston was admitted to the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale University. In 1898 he joined the First Connecticut Light Infantry in hopes of fighting in the Spanish-American War but never saw action. He returned to Beatrice at the war’s end and married Margaret Collins of Brooklyn, NY, in 1903. They raised three sons in Beatrice, where Bert worked for the family business, the Beatrice National Bank, established his own business, Nebraska Corn Mills, and managed the Western business interests of his wife’s family.

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.

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).

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.

Putnam, Melvin (1869-1937). Canadian-American minister. Born in Ontario, Canada, Melvin Putnam came to the U.S. in 1888. In 1890 he married Lillian Miller; their one son, Glen Putnam, was born in Ohio in 1891. Melvin Putnam became a minister of the Christian Church, serving the congregation in Red Cloud, NE, in 1893-94, where Willa Cather and some of her friends knew him. Later he served in churches in Colorado, Utah, Missouri, Oklahoma, Washington, and Oregon, where he died.

Dorris, Sarah Harris (1862-1918). American newspaper editor. Born in Massachusetts, Sarah came to Lincoln, NE, in 1870 with her parents, railroad land agent George B. Harris and his wife Sarah. She graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1888. After several years in Lincoln’s social scene, she became associated with the Lincoln Courier, a weekly newspaper. Cather, who knew Harris socially, was briefly Harris’s coeditor in the fall of 1895. After Cather moved to Pittsburgh, PA, in 1896, she contributed reviews, columns, and stories to the Courier, and she stopped in Lincoln to visit Harris occasionally on her way to and from Red Cloud. In August 1903, Cather met Edith Lewis, who also wrote for the Courier, at Harris’s house. Sarah Harris married retired surgeon Alvah H. Dorris in 1907, several years after she sold the newspaper.

Rossi, Luigi (1853–1923). Swiss painter. Born in Cassarate, Switzerland, Luigi Rossi studied at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, Italy, under the tutelage of Giuseppe Bertini. From 1885 to 1888 Rossi lived in Paris, France, painting and illustrating works by Alphonse Daudet, Pierre Loti, and others.

Cather, John (1892-1959) (“Jack”). Cather’s brother. Born and raised in Red Cloud, NE, Jack was the seventh child and fourth son of Charles and Virginia Cather. He was nearly two decades younger than Willa Cather, and she was a doting older sister when he was a small boy. Because she missed him after her 1896 move to Pittsburgh, PA, she wrote several poems about him and the story “Jack-a-Boy” (1901). After graduating from Red Cloud High School in 1912, Jack studied for two years at University of Nebraska in Lincoln. With Willa Cather’s encouragement, in 1914 he enrolled at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh to study engineering. Willa Cather was then living in New York City but traveled to Pittsburgh to help him settle in and enjoyed visiting him and supported his decision to change his major to theater. It is not clear whether he graduated from Carnegie Tech but the British government trained him as a chemist so he could inspect munitions factories. While working in Smethport, PA, he met Irma Wells, and they married in 1918. They had two children, Catherine and Ella Faye. After World War I, he worked as a chemical engineer in the oil industry in Cincinnati, OH, Casper, WY, and Bradford, PA. In 1936 he moved to Whittier, CA, and became a business partner with his brothers Douglass and James in an oil production company. He died in Long Beach, CA. Willa Cather mentions him frequently in letters, but she seems to have had little contact with him and his family in later years, and no letters from her to him have surfaced.

Gere, Mariel E. Clapham (1838-1912). Cather’s friend; mother of her friends, the Gere sisters. Mariel Elizabeth Clapham was born in Washington, D.C., the daughter of Captain John Clapham and Mariel Goodwin Clapham. She corresponded with Charles Gere for several years before their marriage in 1871, when she came to Lincoln, NE. When Cather became friends with their daughters Mariel, Ellen, and Frances, she welcomed her to their home at 8th and D streets. Mrs. Gere, according to Cather, persuaded her to grow out her close-cropped hair.