Swinnerton, Frank Arthur (1884-1982). British novelist and critic. Born in Wood Green, a suburb outside of London, England, to Charles and Rose Swinnerton, Frank Swinnerton worked for London publisher Chatto and Windus from 1906 to 1923. Swinnerton also wrote about sixty novels, including Nocturne (1917), Quadrille (1965), and Sanctuary (1966), and worked as a literary critic for Truth, the London Evening News, and The Observer. Cather met him and his wife, Mary Dorothy Bennett Swinnerton, when returning to the U.S. on the Berengaria in November 1923 and subsequently corresponded with him.

Red Cloud (1822-1909). Oglala Lakota Chief. Red Cloud, originally named Mahpiua-Luta, was born in Mahpíya Lúta, in what is now northern NE, to Walks as She Thinks and Lone Man. After the death of his father, he was raised by his mother’s uncle, an Oglala Sioux tribal leader named Smoke. When white settlers began pushing towards Montana during the gold rush of the 1860s, Red Cloud lead a successful resistance campaign that forced the U.S. government to stop construction of the Bozeman trail and abandon its forts protecting the road. After Red Cloud signed the Second Treaty of Fort Laramie he ceased his military resistance campaign and moved to the Red Cloud Agency reservation in Nebraska. The Red Cloud Agency was eventually moved to South Dakota in 1877 and renamed the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1878. He spent the rest of his life working as a diplomat and advocating for Native American rights. Cather’s childhood home, Red Cloud, NE, was named after him, despite being located on land that once belonged to the Kitkehahki band of the Pawnee tribe.

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.