Abbott, Edward C. (1874-1960) (“Ned”). Educator; Cather's university classmate. Ned Abbott was born in Nebraska, third son of Luther, a physician, and Clara Abbott. He and his brothers attended the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, where he worked on the Hesperian under Willa Cather, and succeeded her as the editor in 1894. He graduated in 1896. Abbott taught in Manila in the Philippines and in Nebraska, becoming superintendent of the state school for the blind in Nebraska City, NE, in 1910, and retiring in 1947. He wanted to write a biography of Cather and corresponded with her about it.

Dailey, William M. (1828-1926). Nebraska farmer and legislator. Born in Madison, IN, William Dailey married Maria Culbertson in 1850; they had nine children, including Willa Cather’s high school teacher and friend, Estelle Dailey Goudy. In 1861 the Daileys moved to Nemaha County, NE; in 1866 William Dailey was elected to represent Nemaha County in the last Territorial Council and first State legislature of Nebraska. In 1871 he was appointed a United States Marshall for Nebraska, and in 1880 was again elected to the state senate. He was one of the founders of the State Normal College at Peru, in Nemaha County, and was one of the best-known of the early settlers of Nebraska.

McClure, Samuel Sidney (1857-1949) (“S.S.”). Irish-born American publisher. McClure immigrated to the U.S. at age nine, living with his family in Indiana. Despite poverty and the limited education he had received in Ireland, he graduated from high school and then Knox College in Illinois. He then moved to Boston, MA, where from 1882 to 1884 he edited the Wheelman, a bicycling magazine. Despite opposition from her parents, he married his Knox College classmate Harriet Hurd in 1883. The couple had four biological children (Eleanor, Bess, Mary, and Robert), and adopted one (Enrico). In 1884, S.S. started McClure’s Syndicate, which placed fiction in newspapers across the country. In 1893 with his college classmate John Sanborn Phillips he started McClure's Magazine, which was best-known for the "muckraking" exposés by writers such as Ida Tarbell and Lincoln Steffens, but which also published literature. After his cousin H.H. McClure, who worked for the McClure Syndicate, brought Cather to S.S. McClure’s attention, McClure, Phillips & Co. brought out Cather’s first book of fiction, The Troll Garden (1905). When most of the editorial staff, including Steffens and Tarbell, resigned from McClure’s in 1906, he hired Cather as an editor; she later became managing editor. After she left her position at McClure’s in 1912 and when S. S. McClure had lost control of the magazine still bearing his name, Cather ghost wrote his autobiography (McClure’s serial 1913-1914, book publication 1914). McClure made repeated—and ultimately failed—attempts to reestablish himself in journalism and magazine publishing, often trying to enlist Cather in these enterprises. She almost went with him to Europe in 1915 to report on the war for the Evening Mail, and she remained personally loyal to her mercurial and often-irresponsible former employer. He served as the prototype for Marcus O’Mally, editor of the Outcry, in her story “Ardessa” (1918), and it has been suggested that Cather modeled the courtship and marriage between Myra and Oswald Henshaw in My Mortal Enemy (1926) on that of the McClures.