Hills, Laura Coombs (1859-1952). American painter. Born in the coastal town of Newburyport, MA, Hills began studying painting as a child. Early in her career she exhibited works in oil, watercolor, and pastel, illustrated children’s books, and undertook design work. From the 1890s she became a noted painter of miniatures on ivory; in the 1920s diminishing eyesight caused her shift to pastels of flowers. Throughout her life Hills spent her summers in Newburyport. In 1903 she moved her winter studio to 66 Chestnut Street in Boston; artist Karoline Bernheimer shared the space while Hills’ sister Lizzie handled domestic duties. When Cather was on assignment in Boston for McClure’s Magazine in 1907, she took an apartment on Chestnut Street, leading to a lifelong friendship and correspondence.

Roseboro’, Viola (1857-1945). American editor and author. Born in Pulaski, TN, to parents whose abolitionist sympathies caused them to flee the state shortly before the Civil War, Viola Roseboro’ graduated from Fairmount College in Monteagle, TN. Before moving to New York City around 1882, she was an actress with a traveling stock company. In New York she worked as a journalist and began publishing short stories in magazines while continuing to tour occasionally until she left the stage permanently in 1887. Roseboro’ actively published fiction for the rest of her life, including The Joyous Heart (1903), a Civil War novel critical of Southern slavery, and Players and Vagabonds (1904), a collection of stories about the theater. Having sold short stories to the McClure fiction syndicate in the 1880s, in the early 1890s she began evaluating manuscripts for the syndicate and soon did the same for McClure’s Magazine and book publisher McClure, Phillips & Co. Cather evidently first met Roseboro’ in 1903, when S.S. McClure called her to New York to discuss her fiction; the two women began corresponding, and Roseboro’ may have influenced McClure’s decision to hire Cather as an editor for his magazine in 1906. When most of the magazine editorial staff walked out on McClure that year, Roseboro’ stayed, but when S.S. McClure lost control of the magazine in 1911, she left for Collier’s Weekly. When her position there ended, she moved to Staten Island and struggled to support herself as an author’s consultant. When S.S. McClure regained control of his magazine in 1921, she rejoined the staff and took an apartment at 13 Bank Street, but the position did not last long and she was soon struggling to support herself again; a 1928 bequest from a friend alleviated her financial distress and allowed her to live comfortably abroad and in New Dorp on Staten Island. Cather’s letters to Roseboro’ suggest that, long after she became an established author, Cather valued Roseboro’s friendship and her judgment in literary matters. She particularly valued Roseboro’s response as a Southerner to Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940), an advance copy of which she sent to her.