Austin, Mary Hunter (1868-1934). American author and critic. Born in Carlinville, IL, Mary Hunter received a BS from Blackford College in 1888, the same year she moved with her mother and siblings to California’s San Joaquin Valley. In 1891 she married Stafford Wallace Austin. In 1903, they separated (they divorced in 1915) and her collection of California desert stories, The Land of Little Rain, appeared. Between 1903 and 1924, Austin spent periods of time in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City; London, England; and Carmel, CA; however, most of her literary output continued to focus on the deserts of California and the Southwest. Cather may have met Austin as early as 1910, and Austin’s poetry appeared in McClure’s Magazine in 1911 and 1912. In February 1919 Austin wrote Ferris Greenslet of Houghton Mifflin, their mutual publisher, praising My Ántonia (1918) and asking for additional information and materials to write an appreciation of Cather for El Palacio, a magazine published in Santa Fe, NM; her essay appeared in 1920. When Cather and Edith Lewis travelled to the Southwest in 1925, they saw Austin in New Mexico, where she had built Casa Querida in Santa Fe in 1924. When Cather returned in 1926 to continue research and writing of Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927), Austin offered her the use of her empty house to work in. Cather inscribed a copy of Archbishop “For Mary Austin, in whose lovely study I wrote the last chapters of this book,” but she began denying that she had written any part of the novel in Casa Querida after Austin published Earth Horizon (1932), in which she called Cather’s celebration of French missionary priests a “calamity” for Southwestern culture. Austin died at home two years later.

Cather, Meta Schaper (1884-1973). Cather’s sister-in-law. Meta Schaper was born in Plattsmouth, NE, the second daughter of Robert and Julia Ramke Schaper. After graduating from the University of Nebraska in Lincoln 1903, Meta Schaper taught at Havelock High School in her hometown of Havelock, NE (now part of Lincoln). She met Roscoe Cather when teaching in Fullerton, NE, and they married in 1907. They moved to Lander, WY, in 1909, where she gave birth to three daughters, Virginia and twins Margaret and Elizabeth. The family moved to Casper, WY, in 1921 and Colusa, CA, in 1937. Willa visited Meta and Roscoe’s family in Wyoming several times and shared important travel experiences with them, including a 1926 trip to New Mexico with Meta, Roscoe, and their children and a 1941 San Francisco vacation with Roscoe and Meta. Meta and Willa remained friends until Willa’s death.

Brockway, Virginia Cather (1912-1984) (“West Virginia”). Cather's niece. Born in Lander, WY, to Roscoe Cather and Meta Schaper Cather, Virginia graduated from Natrona County High School in Casper, WY, in 1929. She received an A.B. in English from Smith College in Northampton, MA, in 1933, the same year Willa Cather received an honorary doctorate there. In 1934, she enrolled in the University of Chicago School of Social Services and was, for a time, a social worker. She married John Hadley Brockway, a Navy officer, in 1936. They moved frequently until his retirement from the Navy. She had one child, son George. In letters, Willa Cather sometimes calls her "West Virginia" to distinguish her from her cousin Mary Virginia Auld because Virginia Cather's birthplace in Wyoming was farther west than Mary Virginia's in Nebraska.

Ickis, Elizabeth Cather (1915-1978) (half of the “twinnies”). Cather’s niece. Elizabeth and her twin sister Margaret were born in Lander, WY, to Roscoe and Meta Cather, and moved with the family to Casper, WY, in 1921. Elizabeth and Margaret both attended the University of Colorado, graduating in 1937, and visited Willa Cather and Edith Lewis on Grand Manan during the summers of 1936 and 1937. In Cather’s later letters to them she often refers back to their summer visits as a magical time. Elizabeth moved to Colusa, CA, with her parents in 1937 and married Lynn S. Ickis, an electrical engineer, in April 1938. They lived in Cleveland, OH, and had two children, Margaret and John.

Shannon, Margaret Cather (1915-1996) (half of the “twinnies”). Cather’s niece. Margaret and her twin sister Elizabeth were born in Lander, WY, to Roscoe and Meta Cather, and moved with the family to Casper, WY, in 1921. Elizabeth and Margaret both attended the University of Colorado, graduating in 1937, and visited Willa Cather and Edith Lewis on Grand Manan during the summers of 1936 and 1937. In Cather’s later letters to them, she often refers back to their summer visits as a magical time. Margaret moved to Colusa, CA, with her parents in 1937. After she married Richard Shannon in September 1938, she moved with him to Boston, MA, where he earned an MBA from Harvard University in Cambridge. In 1940 they moved to the New York City area, where their first child, Richard, was born in 1943. The Shannons moved to Washington, DC, in 1944, where their daughter Kathryne was born. Cather did not see Margaret again after she left New York, and Margaret’s other three children, Patricia, Margaret, and Elizabeth, were born after Cather’s death. Kathryne and Patricia became caretakers for a large family archive of letters preserved by their mother, which they donated to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln as the Roscoe and Meta Cather Collection.

Luhan, Mabel Dodge (1879-1962). American patron of the arts and memoirist. Born Mabel Ganson into a wealthy Buffalo, NY, family, Mabel Evans traveled to Paris, France, in 1904 after the death of her first husband. She met and married Edwin Dodge there and moved with him to a villa in Florence, Italy, where they collected art and Mabel conducted a salon. She moved to New York City in 1912 and separated from her husband soon after (they divorced in 1916). In her Fifth Avenue apartment near Washington Square, she reestablished her salon and supported modern art and radical political causes. Cather may have known Mabel Dodge slightly during her New York year but came to know her better in New Mexico, where she moved in 1917 with her third husband, Maurice Sterne, from whom she divorced in 1922. Mabel married Antonio Lujan, a Taos Pueblo Indian, in 1923. Thereafter she called herself Mabel Dodge Luhan. When Cather and Edith Lewis traveled to New Mexico in June 1925, Luhan invited Cather to visit her in Taos, seeking advice on her manuscript memoirs of her life. Lewis and Cather’s long stay in Taos inspired Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927). Cather and Lewis again stayed with Luhan in 1926, and although Luhan invited them back, they did not return to New Mexico. In 1928, Cather encouraged Alfred Knopf to consider publishing the early volumes of Luhan’s memoirs, praising them as “intensely interesting and alive” (#2589). However, Harcourt Brace published all four volumes of Luhan’s memoirs, Background (1933), European Experiences (1935), Movers and Shakers (1936), and Edge of Taos Desert (1937). Cather also read the later portions in manuscript. Cather praised Luhan’s memoir of D.H. Lawrence during his New Mexico years, Lorenzo in Taos (Knopf 1932), as “the best portrait there ever will be of Lawrence” (#1036). Luhan lived in Taos until her death.

Huey, Anna Virginia Watrous (1893-1973). Santa Fe, NM, clubwoman. Born in Illinois, a daughter of Charles T. Watrous and Antoinette Leland Watrous, Anna Watrous married oil executive Howard Huey in around 1915; they had two daughters. They moved to Santa Fe, NM, around 1917. Anna Huey was active in politics and in cultural organizations such as the Santa Fe Players, the Santa Fe Writers Association, and the Literati. She was part of a social circle which included Cather acquaintances Mary Austin, Witter Bynner, and Alice Corbin Henderson. The Huey family moved to Chicago, IL, in 1935, and later to San Diego, CA, where she died. Anna Huey brought Cather the key to Mary Austin’s Santa Fe house for Cather to use in 1926, when she was writing Death Comes for the Archbishop.