Fisher, Dorothy Canfield (1879-1958). American novelist; educational and social reformer. Dorothy Canfield and Willa Cather became friends in 1891 at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, where Canfield's father, James Canfield, had come to serve as Chancellor. The family moved to Columbus, OH, in 1895 when James Canfield assumed the presidency of Ohio State University, from which Dorothy graduated in 1899. She then followed her father to New York City, where he became Librarian of Columbia University, and she pursued graduate study in Romance Languages at the University of Paris and Columbia, from which she earned a PhD in 1904. On Cather’s first trip to Europe, she spent time in France and England with Canfield, including an awkward visit to the home of poet A.E. Housman. Cather derived the central character of “The Profile” (1907) from Canfield’s friend Evelyn Osborne, whom Cather had met in Europe. Cather and Canfield became estranged for more than a decade because Canfield objected to the story’s planned inclusion in The Troll Garden (1905). Canfield married John Redwood Fisher in 1907, and their primary residence was Arlington, VT. Canfield Fisher had spent 1916-1918 in France engaging in war relief work, and Cather’s consultation with her about the accuracy of her depiction of wartime France in One of Ours (1922) led them to reconcile. In 1925 Canfield Fisher became a founding member of the Book of the Month Club selection committee. She published her novels (most of them very popular) under the name Dorothy Canfield but her various nonfiction works as Dorothy Canfield Fisher.

Macpherson, Eugenia Commandeur Hunt (c.1865-?). Wife of Ewan Macpherson. Born in Indiana, Eugenia Commandeur Hunt married the American journalist and writer Ewan Charles Macpherson in Louisville, KY, in 1894. She moved with her husband to New York City in 1900, and spent time with him in Pittsburgh, PA, where he was editor of the literary journal The Library, in which Willa Cather published several stories, including “The Affair at Grosvenor Station.”

Macpherson, Ewan Charles (1854-1915). American writer and editor. Born in Kingston, Jamaica, to English parents, Macpherson came to the U.S. as a young man and wrote for many newspapers and magazines. He married Eugenia Commandeur Hunt in Louisville, KY, in 1894, and the couple had one son. For a short period in 1900 he edited the Library in Pittsburgh, PA, where he hired Cather as a writer and published many of her pieces. By 1905 he lived in New York City, where he contributed to newspapers and to the Catholic Encyclopedia.

McClung, Samuel A. (1845-1915) American jurist, Isabelle McClung’s father. Born in Alleghany County, PA, to a Presbyterian minister and his wife, Samuel McClung graduated from Washington College in 1863 and in 1868 was admitted to the bar and moved to Pittsburgh, PA. He was appointed Judge of the Court of Common Pleas in 1872 and was known for his conservatism. He married Fannie Merritt in 1874 and they had three children, Isabelle, Samuel Jr., and Edith. In 1901 Isabelle McClung invited Willa Cather to reside in the McClung family home in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, and she lived there until her 1906 move to New York City. Cather often returned there to write until Judge McClung’s death caused the sale of family home in 1916.