Guide to Reading Letter Transcriptions
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| Textual Feature | Appearance |
|---|---|
| passage deleted with a strikethrough mark | |
| passage deleted by overwritten added letters | |
| passage added above the line | passage with added text above |
| passage added on the line | passage with added text inline |
| passage added in the margin | passage with text added in margin |
| handwritten addition to a typewritten letter | typed passage with added handwritten text |
| missing or unreadable text | missing text noted with "[illegible]" |
| uncertain transcriptions | word[?] |
| notes written by someone other than Willa Cather | Note in another's hand |
| printed letterhead text | printed text |
| text printed on postcards, envelopes, etc. | printed text |
| text of date and place stamps | stamped text |
| passage written by Cather on separate enclosure. | written text |
Your letter has awakened many pleasant memories. Your grandmother,
(or great grandmother), Mary Ann Anderson3, was a very special favorite of mine when I was a
little girl of five to eight years old and lived at Willow Shade4 on the Northwestern Turnpike. When I was shut
up in the house with colds, I used to watch out of the front windows, hoping to see
Mrs. Anderson coming down the road. My family usually sent some word to her when I
was sick, because she was so tactful and understanding with a child.
Years after we moved West, when I graduated from college5, I went immediately back to visit my great-aunt, Mrs. Gore6. At that time I had several happy meetings with Mary Ann Anderson. She came down to Auntie Gore's to see me, and I several times walked up that beautiful Hollow Road, up to Timber Ridge, to see her in her little house where she lived all alone, and where she was as happy as the day was long. She had a most unusual interest, you understand, in following the story of peoples' lives and knowing everything that happened to them. She got great pleasure out of other peoples' good luck, and was deeply sympathetic when they had bad luck. At this time I was twenty-one years old7, but of course I remembered all the people I knew in my childhood. Mary Ann and I talked for hours at a time, and she would tell me all about what became of the people whom I remembered —how they lived, if they were still alive, and how the older people had ended their days.
Your Aunt Marjorie8 and your Uncle Enoch9 both went to Nebraska10 with us. Enoch was with us for two years
and then, when my father11 decided to leave the
farm, he and two boys from Winchester12 went
to California13 to hunt work in the big wheat
fields there. He once sent us a picture of himself driving a big threshing ⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩machine,
but after that we never heard of him. Your Aunt Marjorie died in 1928. She was in
our family continuously after we left Virginia14 until the day of her death. She was greatly beloved by all
of us, — children and grandchildren. Her
love of children was one of her outstanding qualities. I have lived in New York2 for thirty years, but while my parents15 were living I went home16 for long visits, at least every other summer.
I used always to spend many happy hours with Marjorie in the big sunny kitchen17 or on the shady back porch. She
always liked to talk about old times in
Virginia, and my father always told her the news that came in the weekly Winchester
paper. I shall always remember those hours with Marjorie on the shady back porch or
in the sunny kitchen with especial pleasure. She died from a short illness in the
autumn of 1928, when I was in New England18.
She is buried in the
our family lot in Red Cloud, Nebraska.
I have had many pleasant letters since the publication of "Sapphira and the Slave Girl"19, but few of them have called up so many happy memories as yours, which brought once more my dear Mary Ann Anderson to my mind. How glad I would be to have the croup again, if I could watch out of one of those windows at Willow Shade and see Mrs. Anderson coming briskly around the turn of the road! Here is a photograph lately taken of all that is left of the once beautiful Willow Shade, and I have marked a circle around the window where I used to sit to watch for my dear Mrs. Anderson coming down the road.
Very cordially yours, Willa CatherP.S. The name of the woman who wove our carpets was Mrs. Kearns20, but there may have been a Mrs. Cowper21 also.
Miss Cather asks me to explain that the signature affixed to this letter is genuine but unlike her natural signature. Because of an accident to her right hand22. It is still in splints and she can make only a very poor attempt with her left hand.
S. J. Bloom23 SecretaryInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1542.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1542
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto and verso. Includes one enclosure.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Rose Anderson Ackroyd 1
- Date letter was written
- May 16, 1941
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Willa Cather Papers, 1899-1949 (MSS 6494), University of Virginia, Special Collections, Charlottesville, VA
Individual Annotations
Willow Shade (Back Creek Valley, VA): Home built by Willa Cather’s grandparents, William and Caroline Cather, in 1851. Willa Cather and her parents lived at Willow Shade soon after her birth until 1883, when they relocated to Nebraska.
Willow Shade, mid-1870s. Philip L. and Helen Cather Southwick Collection, Archives Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries.
Cather's first return visit to Virginia after her family's migration seems to have been in 1900, five years after she graduated from the University of Nebraska (see #2787).
At the time of her 1900 visit to Virginia, Cather was twenty-six years old.
541 N. Seward Street (Red Cloud, NE): Built circa 1899, Cather’s parents, Charles F. and Mary Virginia Boak Cather, purchased this home in 1903. Cather stayed here when she returned to Red Cloud to visit her parents, returning for the last time in 1931 following her mother’s death. At that time, Cather's sister Elsie inherited the house, returning to Red Cloud for summer vacations for most of the 1930s. Willa Cather contributed to the maintenance of the property until Elsie sold the house in 1945 to W. H. Maynard. By 1946, it was being used as a local hospital. Willa Cather used the house as the prototype for the second Ferguesson house in her short story “The Best Years.”
Cather significantly injured a tendon in her right thumb in November 1940 after signing hundreds of copies of her novel Sapphira and the Slave Girl. Her right hand was immobilized for months afterward, and the pain recurred often in later years.
Person Annotations
Ackroyd, Rose Anderson Compton (1874-after 1940). Granddaughter of Cather’s Virginia friend. Rose Anderson was born in rural Frederick County, VA, daughter of Gabriel and Catherine Anderson; her father was the fourth son of Mary Ann and Asa Anderson of Back Creek, Frederick County. Rose married George E. Compton in 1896 and moved to Pennsylvania. Widowed, she married a Mr. Ackroyd around 1915; by 1930 she was widowed again and living in New Jersey, where she still lived in 1940. When she wrote Cather about Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940), recognizing her paternal grandmother in the character of Mrs. Ringer, Cather responded with her own memories of Mrs. Anderson and her family, two of whom, Enoch and Marjorie, came to Nebraska with the Cathers and are prototypes for characters in My Ántonia (1918).
Anderson, Mary Ann Marpole (1820-1902). Cather family friend.
A distant relative of the Cather family, Mary Ann Marpole married
Asa Anderson in 1838. Widowed in middle age, she raised a large family on a
farm in the Timber Ridge area of Back Creek Valley, VA; her daughter
Marjorie and son Enoch accompanied the Cather family to Nebraska. Mrs.
Anderson’s visits to the Cather family home in Virginia when Willa Cather
was a child inspired Cather to portray Mrs. Anderson as Mandy Ringer, the
cheerful and “born interested” mountain woman in Sapphira
and the Slave Girl (1940).
Gore, Sidney Sophia Cather (1828-1906). Teacher, innkeeper; Cather’s
great-aunt. Born in Back Creek Valley, VA, daughter of James and
Ann Howard Cather, Sidney Cather married Mahlon Gore in 1847; they had three
sons, Perry, James Howard, and Joshua. In 1854, despite opposition from her
family, Sidney joined the Baptist church. Widowed in 1861, she was forced to
sell her household goods to settle Mahlon’s debts. She then taught school
and later was able to send her sons to college. During the Civil War, she
sheltered and nursed both Union and Confederate soldiers, and after the war
she continued to help the poor in her community. The town of Back Creek was
renamed Gore after her. Willa Cather visited her great-aunt on her 1900 trip
to Virginia, and they corresponded occasionally. Cather portrayed her as
Mrs. Bywaters in Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940).
Anderson, Marjorie (1854-1924) (“Margie”). Cather family servant. Born in Back Creek Valley, VA, the daughter of Mary Ann and Asa Anderson, Marjorie accompanied the Charles Cather family to Nebraska, living with them for the rest of her life. She was especially devoted to the Cather children, who loved her in return. In her later years she became shy and reclusive. Cather based several characters on Marjorie: Mahailey in One of Ours (1922), Marty in the poem, “Poor Marty” (1931), and Mandy in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932).
Anderson, Enoch A. (1860-before 1940). American farm laborer; Marjorie Anderson's brother. Born in Back Creek Valley, VA, a younger son of Mary Ann and Asa Anderson, Enoch Anderson accompanied his sister and the Charles F. Cather family when they moved from Back Creek to Webster County, NE, in 1883. He worked on their farm until they decided to move into Red Cloud in early 1885, when he moved to California. By 1890 he was living and working on farms in Colusa County in California’s Central Valley, north of Sacramento. In 1900 he lived in nearby Tahama County, then by 1906 he settled in neighboring Butte County, where he still lived in 1930, when he was a teamster on a farm. Cather said that he once sent a picture of himself driving a threshing machine, but they never heard from him again (#1542). In My Ántonia (1918) Cather uses some of these details in the story of farmhand Jake Marpole.
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).
Cather, Mary Virginia Boak (1850-1931) (“Virginia” or
“Jenny”). Cather’s mother. Born in Virginia to William Lee Boak
and Rachel Seibert Boak, Virginia was educated in Baltimore, MD, and was a
schoolteacher until her marriage to Charles Fectigue Cather in 1872. Her
husband’s family were primarily Union supporters during the Civil War while
her family supported the Confederacy (three brothers served in the
Confederate Army although their mother opposed slavery). After her marriage
she tried to help unite the divided family. Four of her children, Willa,
Roscoe, Charles Douglas, and Jessica Virginia, were born in Virginia, while
three, James Donald, Elsie Margaret, and John Esten, were born in Nebraska
after the family moved there in 1883. Despite occasional differences, Cather
remained in affectionate contact with her mother, who remained in Red Cloud,
NE, where the family settled in 1884. After her husband’s death in 1928
Virginia Cather suffered a stroke while visiting her children and their
families in California. She spent nearly three years in a sanitarium in
Pasadena, CA, unable to speak. Willa Cather visited her there several times
but was unable to travel quickly enough from Grand Manan to Red Cloud for
her funeral and interment after she died in Pasadena in 1931. Virginia
Cather was the prototype for Victoria Templeton in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932),
which Willa Cather completed shortly before her mother’s death.
Kerns, Julia Ann Triplett (1833-1885). Back Creek, VA, resident. Born in Virginia, daughter of John and Rachel Triplett, Julia Triplett married Back Creek farmer Benjamin Kern in 1851. They had thirteen children. Julia Kerns may have been the carpet-weaving Mrs. Kearns whom Cather mentions in #1542.
Cowper, Mrs. Although there were a number of Mrs. Coopers in the Back Creek, VA, area, there is no evidence to connect any particular one to the carpet-weaving Mrs. Cowper whom Cather mentions.
Bloom, Sarah J. (1889-1961). Cather's personal secretary. Born in New York in 1889 to Russian immigrants Solomon and Bertha Bloom, Sarah J. Bloom worked for Cather from some time in the 1920s until Cather's death and continued to work for Edith Lewis on matters pertaining to Cather's literary estate thereafter. Bloom typed Cather's literary manuscripts and managed Cather's correspondence, typing dictated letters and sometimes responding for Cather when she was traveling. Bloom’s work for Cather supplemented full-time office employment in New York City (for many years she worked for the New York State Public Service Commission). She thus came to Cather and Lewis's apartment on weekends to take dictation, pick up and deliver typescripts, and deliver typed letters for signature. She died in New York city in 1961.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940), by Willa Cather
