Street, Julian Leonard (1879-1947). American writer. Born in Chicago, IL, Street graduated from Ridley College, a boys’ preparatory school located in St. Catharines, ON, Canada, in 1896. In 1899, Street began reporting for the New York Mail and Express and took charge of the dramatic department in 1900. The same year, he married Ada Hilt, with whom he had two children and coauthored Tide (1926), a novel published shortly after her death. Street later married Marguerite Skibeness in 1930. Among his other works are The Most Interesting American (1915), an assessment of Theodore Roosevelt, The Country Cousin (1917), a comedy coauthored with Booth Tarkington, and “Mr. Bisbee’s Princess” (1925), a short story which won the O. Henry Award. Street was also a well-known authority on food and wine. For New York City wine merchant Bellows Co., he wrote an irregularly-published four-page pamphlet on wine, which Cather read and which disposed her to strike up a correspondence with him when he wrote asking her to autograph copies of her books.

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.

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.

Street, Ane Ingeborg Marguerite Skibeness (1899-1997) (“Margot Andre”). American theater worker; wife of Julian Street. Born in Tacoma, WA, daughter of Norwegian immigrants Knute B. Skibeness and Caroline Reed Skibeness, Marguerite Skibeness attended the State College of Washington, the National University of Mexico, and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Around 1923 she moved to New York City, working on the technical side of the theater business, using the name Margot Andre. She also directed the Lighthouse Players of the New York Association for the Blind for several years before her marriage, in May 1930, to writer Julian Street. Marguerite Street appears to have known Cather through her husband. They lived in Princeton, NJ, for many years; she later donated her husband’s papers to Princeton University.