Whicher, George Frisbie (1889-1954). Amherst College English professor. After receiving a PhD from Columbia University in 1913, Whicher taught at Amherst College, his alma mater, from 1915 to 1954. The most notable of his many books and translations was a critical biography of Emily Dickinson, This Was a Poet (1938). Whicher sometimes taught at the Bread Loaf School of English, a summer program of Middlebury College in Vermont. He and his wife, Harriet Fox Whicher, met Cather there in 1922 when she came to give four lectures about writing. Cather enjoyed the company of their two sons, John Fox Whicher and Stephen Emerson Whicher, and she corresponded with Harriet and George until late in life.

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).

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.

Fitch, William Clyde (1865-1909) (“Clyde”). American playwright. Born in Elmira, NY, Clyde Fitch graduated in 1886 from Amherst College, where he excelled in amateur theatricals. After his death, an annual lecture series at the college was named for him. In 1890 his play, Beau Brummell, became one of the signature roles of renowned actor Richard Mansfield. Fitch became one of the most prolific playwrights on Broadway: his thirty-six original plays ranged from romantic comedies to historical dramas to melodramas, while he adapted another two dozen or so other works for the stage. He also published his plays and produced a few film adaptations of his works. Cather reviewed some of his early plays in her years as a drama critic, but she probably never met him.