Cather, Frances Amanda Smith (1845-1922) (“Franc”). Cather’s aunt. Born in Boston, MA, Franc graduated from Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, MA, in 1870. Franc worked both as a private tutor and as a teacher at Winchester Female Institute in Winchester, VA. In 1873 she and George Cather married and moved to Webster County in Nebraska, where they raised their five children—Grosvenor, Blanche, Carrie, and twins Frank and Oscar. Willa and Franc Cather maintained a warm relationship and were regular correspondents until Franc’s death, exchanging letters about family matters and about Willa’s writing. Elements of the life of her New-England-born aunt inspired the character Aunt Georgiana in Willa Cather’s story “A Wagner Matinee” (1904), and Franc’s son Grosvenor was the prototype for Claude Wheeler in One of Ours (1922), making Frances the prototype for Claude’s mother, Evangeline Wheeler.

Cather, Mary Virginia Boak (1850-1931) (“Virginia” or “Jenny”). Cather’s mother. Born in the Virginia to William Lee Boak and Rachel Seibert Boak, Virginia was educated in Baltimore, MD, and was a schoolteacher until her marriage to Charles Fectigue Cather in 1872. Her husband’s family were primarily Union supporters during the Civil War while her family supported the Confederacy (three brothers served in the Confederate Army although their mother opposed slavery). After her marriage she tried to help unite the divided family. Four of her children, Willa, Roscoe, Charles Douglas, and Jessica Virginia, were born in Virginia, while three, James Donald, Elsie Margaret, and John Esten, were born in Nebraska after the family moved there in 1883. Despite occasional differences, Cather remained in affectionate contact with her mother, who remained in Red Cloud, NE, where the family settled in 1884. After her husband’s death in 1928 Virginia Cather suffered a stroke while visiting her children and their families in California. She spent nearly three years in a sanitarium in Pasadena, CA, unable to speak. Willa Cather visited her there several times but was unable to travel quickly enough from Grand Manan to Red Cloud for her funeral and interment after she died in Pasadena in 1931. Virginia Cather was the prototype for Victoria Templeton in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932), which Willa Cather completed shortly before her mother’s death.

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.

Vandervelde, Hélène Speyer (1870-1964) (“Lalla”). British actress, writer, musician, and speaker. Born in England to Edward Speyer, a wealthy businessman, and Helen Franziska Forsboom, Vandervelde became a well-known socialist feminist in artistic and political circles in England, France, and Belgium. She was acquainted with Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, Aldous Huxley, Edward Elgar, Roger Fry, George Bernard Shaw, who wrote the play, “Augustus Does His Bit,” for her, and with William Butler Yeats, with whom she collaborated on “Lines to Music.” While married to Belgian statesman Émile Vandervelde, she actively campaigned for Belgian relief during World War I, but her marriage to Émile ended before the war did. Her autobiography, Monarchs and Millionaires, appeared in 1925. A well-known eccentric in her later years, she took up motor racing at age sixty. Cather was impressed by Vandervelde when she saw her speak on 16 November 1914 in Pittsburgh, PA.

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.