Cather, Elsie Margaret (1890-1964) (“Bobbie”). Cather’s sister. Born in Red Cloud, NE, shortly before Willa Cather graduated from high school, Elsie attended the University of Nebraska in Lincoln from 1908 to 1910, before transferring to Smith College, in Northampton, MA, from which she graduated with an A.B. in English and Latin in 1912. She undertook graduate study at the University of Nebraska in 1914 and in 1916 received her A.M. with a major in philosophy and a minor in English. At both the undergraduate and the graduate level at Nebraska, she studied under Louise Pound. She began a career in high school teaching in 1912, when she took a position in Lander, WY, where her brother Roscoe then lived with his family. She also taught in Albuquerque, NM; Corning, IA; Cleveland, OH; and briefly Red Cloud, when illness in the family brought her home. Her longest tenure as a teacher was at Lincoln (NE) High School, where she began teaching in 1920, with Olivia Pound and Mariel Gere as colleagues. Willa Cather's expectation that Elsie be responsible for aging family and friends and for legal affairs after their parents' deaths sometimes brought the sisters into conflict. Elsie Cather retired from Lincoln High School in 1942. She died in Lincoln.

Undset, Sigrid (1882-1949). Norwegian novelist. Undset is best known for her historical novels set in medieval Norway, the Kristin Lavrandsdatter trilogy (1920-22), set in the fourteenth-century, The Master of Hestvikin tetralogy (1925-27), set in the thirteenth century. Early in her career she wrote realistic novels set in contemporary Norway, including Jenny (1911) about a woman painter. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1928 and continued to publish novels, set both in contemporary and historical Norway, that reflected her conversion to Catholicism. Undset persuaded her Norwegian publisher to issue her sister Signe Undset Thomas’s translation of Lucy Gayheart (1935) (the only Norwegian translation of Cather’s work to appear before her death). A strong critic of the German Reich, Undset made a dramatic escape from Norway over the arduous land route when the Nazis invaded Norway in April 1940, events she later described in Return to the Future (1942). When Undset reached New York City in the fall of 1940, Alfred Knopf, Cather and Undset’s mutual publisher, arranged their first meeting. They had long been enthusiastic readers of each other’s novels and were evidently established correspondents, although their extant correspondence begins in 1940. During her exile Undset settled in a residential hotel in Brooklyn Heights, and she and Cather saw each other socially. Cather praised her as “just all a great woman should be - and on a giant scale” (#1541). Undset was an active public critic of the Nazis during her exile. She returned to Norway at the close of the war in 1945 and died there.

Creighton, Mary S. Miner (1873-1968). Clubwoman; Cather’s friend from childhood. Born in Iowa, Mary Miner was the second daughter of James and Julia Miner, neighbors of the Cather family in Red Cloud, NE. Willa Cather later recalled that when she first moved into town with her family and enrolled in school in 1885, “Margie Miner was so jolly I wanted awfully to know her.” They became lifelong friends and correspondents, and Mary’s sisters Irene and Carrie were equally close to Cather. Mary Miner wed local physician E. A. Creighton in 1900 and lived the rest of her life in Red Cloud. She was the prototype for Julia Harling in My Ántonia (1918).

Augustine. No further information is available about this person.

Topham, Joseph (1848-1923). Webster County farmer. Born in England, Joseph Topham married Elizabeth Emery in 1870 in St. Neot’s, Huntingdonshire, England; they had nine children. The family came to the U.S. in 1880, settling in the Guide Rock area of Webster County, NE. In 1910 Joseph Topham bought the Garber place just outside Red Cloud, NE, for $10,100, from Silas Garber’s widow, Lyra Garber. The Garber place and Silas and Lyra Garber served as prototypes for the Forrester place and Daniel and Marian Forrester in Willa Cather’s A Lost Lady (1923). Through her father Charles F. Cather, Willa Cather loaned money to Joseph Topham and his heirs, a business relationship lasting for at least fourteen years.

Sprague, Bernard (1932-1999). Red Cloud lawyer. Born in Hastings, NE, son of Leon and Helen McNeny Sprague, Bernard grew up in Red Cloud, NE; he attended the University of Nebraska and earned his law degree at the University of Denver (CO). In 1955 he married Barbara Flanagan, and they had four children. He served as Assistant United States Attorney in Lincoln, NE, from 1961 to 1963, then returned to Red Cloud to practice, serving, like his father, as Red Cloud City Attorney and Webster County Attorney, and then as District 10 judge.

Sherwood, John Wheaton II (1921-2012). Red Cloud banker. Born in Red Cloud, NE, only son of Clement Miner and Dessie Taylor Sherwood, John was named after his great-grandfather. A graduate of Red Cloud High School, he entered the University of Nebraska in 1939, but after the outbreak of World War II he joined the Navy in 1942, then the Marines in 1944, flying fighter planes. After the war he worked first for a bank in Lincoln, NE, and then the family bank in Red Cloud, People’s-Webster County Bank, starting in 1949; he became its president in 1969. He married Dorothy Ely in 1951, and they had two sons, Brad and James.

Sherwood, Elizabeth J. (1919-1994) (“Betty”). Art gallery worker. Born in Red Cloud, NE, elder daughter of Clement Miner and Dessie Taylor Sherwood, Betty graduated from Red Cloud High School in 1937 and attended the University of Nebraska. She did war work during World War II, then married Evin Phoutrides in 1951; they later divorced. She worked at art galleries in Minneapolis, MN, Seattle, WA, and Lincoln, NE, before returning to Red Cloud in 1978.

Crary, Janet L. Sherwood (1924-2014). Webster County teacher. Born in Red Cloud, NE, younger daughter of Clement Miner and Dessie Taylor Sherwood, Janet graduated from Red Cloud High School and the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, and received a master’s degree in English from Kearney State College. She moved back to Red Cloud in 1959 and taught in elementary schools in Hastings, NE, Superior, NE, and Guide Rock, NE. In 1963 she married Clinton H. Crary of Guide Rock; they had one son.

Moranville, Mary Sherwood (1924-2010). Naval wife. Born in Red Cloud, NE, elder daughter of Phil and Aimee Arnold Sherwood, Mary graduated from Red Cloud High School and attended the University of Nebraska. She married H. Blake Moranville of Guide Rock, NE, a naval officer and World War II fighter ace; they had two sons. The family moved frequently, settling in Oregon after her husband’s retirement from the Navy.

Saladen, Juliet Sherwood (1928-2006) (“Julie”). American nurse. Born in Red Cloud, NE, she was the younger daughter of Phil and Aimee Arnold Sherwood. She married Richard Saladen, also of Red Cloud, in 1950, and they had two children. The family moved to Oregon, where she died.

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).