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.

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).

Wing, Katherine Weston (1871-1903) (“Kit”). Cather’s friend. Born in Nebraska, Katherine was the third of four children born to J.B. and Helen Weston, who became well-to-do residents of Beatrice, NE, thirty miles south of Lincoln, NE. She entered the University of Nebraska in 1887, but withdrew for several years due to poor health. When she returned in 1891, she met Cather. She visited Cather in Red Cloud in the summers of 1891, 1894, and 1895, and Cather visited Weston in Beatrice in June, July, and December 1895, where Cather also enjoyed the company of Katherine’s younger brother Herbert (Bert). Katherine attended the library school of the University of Illinois as a member of the class of 1898 but withdrew in 1897. She then remained at home until her June 1902 marriage to Thomas E. Wing, a fellow 1894 University of Nebraska graduate. She moved with him to Scarsdale, NY, where she died of pneumonia in 1903.

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.

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.

Gund, Charles Frederick (1874-1952) (“Fred"). Nebraska banker. Born in Iowa, Fred Gund moved with his family to Wilbur, NE, in the late 1870s. He graduated from the University of Nebraska in the scientific course in 1893. While there he served as an officer in the cadet corps under Lt. John J. Pershing, and was active in the Wheel (bicycling) Club, the Dramatic Club, and the Scientific Club, and had many friends in common with Cather. Around 1895 he moved to Blue Hill, NE, to work in a bank owned by his father, and in May 1896 he reconnected with Cather when she went to a dance in Blue Hill with friends. He then visited Red Cloud, NE, and married Cather’s friend Margaret Miner in December 1900, with whom he had four children. After the 1932 failure of the Blue Hill bank, the family moved to Crawford, NE, where he was receiver for another bank.

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.

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).

Weisz, Irene Miner (1881-1971). Musician; Cather’s lifelong friend. Born in Red Cloud, NE, the youngest child of James L. Miner and Julia Erickson Miner, Irene Miner was educated in Red Cloud, graduating in 1898 and played with the Cather children as part of the play town of Sandy Point and in amateur theatricals. She studied piano with local teachers, such as Mrs. P.E.B. Sill, then went to the Chicago College of Music from 1899 to 1901. She met clerk Charles Weisz, later president of the A.F. Shaw insurance company, there; they married in late 1915, settling in Chicago. She visited Red Cloud frequently, but also travelled in the American West and then to Europe in 1921 and around the world in 1934. Cather corresponded with Irene Miner Weisz for many years and sometimes stayed with her in Chicago when travelling to and from the West. My Ántonia is dedicated to Irene, model for Nina Harling in the novel, and to her sister Carrie Miner Sherwood.

Gund, Margaret Miner (1875-1936). Cather’s childhood friend; iris breeder. Born in Iowa, the third surviving daughter of James L. and Julia Erickson Miner, Margaret grew up in Red Cloud, NE, where she was one of Cather’s close friends. She played the role of Beauty in the children’s play Beauty and the Beast in 1888, while Cather played the merchant, her father; she also sang and played the violin in various local musical performances. In 1896 she met bank cashier Frederick Gund at a dance in Blue Hill, NE; they were married in December 1900. The couple lived in Blue Hill, where their four children were born and she cultivated iris plants. When the bank closed in 1932, the couple—their children grown—moved to Crawford, NE. Margaret Miner Gund died in Chicago, IL, and is buried in Lincoln, NE. Cather portrayed her as Sally Harling, the tomboy, in My Ántonia (1918).

Bates, Herbert (1868-1929). American educator and writer. Born in Massachusetts, Bates received his BA from Harvard (1890), where he contributed to campus publications. In 1891 he came to the University of Nebraska as an instructor in rhetoric; Cather was one of his students, and he inspired the character of Gaston Cleric in My Ántonia (1918). When he left Nebraska in 1896 she applied unsuccessfully for his position. He published a volume of poetry, Songs of Exile (1896), before joining the faculty of the Manual Training High School in Brooklyn, NY, in 1897. He became active in the National Council of Teachers of English, wrote A History of English Literature (1918), and edited Modern Lyric Poetry (1929), and various classics. Cather owned a copy of his edition of Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1895) and kept in occasional touch with him until his death.

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.”