Cather, Charles Douglas (1880-1938) (“Douglass”). Cather’s brother. Born in Virginia and raised in Red Cloud, NE, Charles was third child and second son of Charles and Virginia Cather. As an adolescent, Douglass Cather helped his father supervise rented farm properties and worked as a messenger for the local Burlington & Missouri Railroad office. In 1897 he left Red Cloud for a position in Sterling, CO, and then took a position with at the Cheyenne, WY, office of the Burlington Railroad. In 1908 he traveled to Mexico, an experience that his sister gave to Emil Bergson in O Pioneers! (1913). By 1910 he was working for the Santa Fe railroad and living in Winslow, AZ, where Willa Cather visited him in 1912. He later achieved success in the oil business in California. Although he never married, Cather notes that during the last six or seven years of his life he had a relationship with Dorothy Rogers. Douglass visited Cather in New York City in December of 1937. His death in June 1938 left her devastated. Douglass served as a prototype for one of the twin brothers in the Templeton family in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932) and Hector the messenger boy brother in “The Best Years” (1948). His years working for the Burlington also inspired Cather’s many railroad worker characters in her novels, including Song of the Lark (1915) and The Professor’s House (1925). Few letters from this important sibling relationship have survived.

Southwick, Helen Louise Cather (1918-2004). Cather’s niece. Helen was born in Red Cloud, NE, to Willa Cather’s brother James and his wife Ethel. Willa was a doting aunt on her visits to Red Cloud. In 1931, Helen moved with her family to Long Beach, CA, where she graduated high school and attended Long Beach City College. In 1939, Helen returned to Red Cloud to help care for her maternal grandmother and then enrolled in the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, where she met her future husband, Philip Southwick. After graduating in 1941, she briefly returned to California to work in the personnel department of Douglas Aircraft company, but married Southwick in Lincoln in 1942, and then moved with him to Champaign, IL. When Philip’s employment took them to Plainfield, NJ, she frequently spent time with her aunt in New York City. In 1946, the Southwicks moved to Pittsburgh, PA, where their son James was born. In later years Helen worked as a school librarian and was active in the Cather Foundation in Red Cloud, NE. She was a beneficiary of Cather’s literary estate, and when Edith Lewis died in 1972 she bequeathed Cather books and manuscripts to Helen and her brother Charles Cather. Helen donated her share of these materials and Willa Cather’s letters to her to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Gere, Frances C. (1877-1965). Cather's friend. Frances Gere, the youngest child of Charles H. and Mariel C. Gere, was born in Lincoln, NE. She entered the University of Nebraska in 1894 and graduated in 1898. Like her sisters, Mariel and Ellen, she joined the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority and lived in Lincoln the remainder of her life.