Sherwood, Carrie Miner (1869-1971). Sherwood, Carrie Belle Miner (1869-1972) Civic leader; Cather's friend. Born in Waukon, IA, to James L. Miner and Julia Erickson Miner, Carrie Miner was the eldest of their children. The family moved to Red Cloud, NE, in 1878, where the Miner Brothers store became the largest in town. Cather remembered meeting Carrie there. In 1884, Carrie, her mother, and siblings were confirmed in the Catholic church. In 1888, she studied music at St. Mary’s Academy at Notre Dame, IN. She married bank clerk Walter Sherwood in late 1889; they had two sons. The Sherwoods travelled often in the West, and visited Europe in 1930. They built a new house at 3rd and Seward streets in Red Cloud in 1908; Cather sometimes sent materials for Carrie to keep in its spacious attics. Carrie Miner Sherwood led local Red Cross work during the two World Wars, served on the Red Cloud school board and park commission, and was active in the League of Women Voters and in the Ladies Guild of Grace Episcopal Church. Cather corresponded with Carrie Miner Sherwood throughout her life and dedicated My Ántonia to Carrie, model for Frances Harling in the novel, and her sister Irene. Carrie was one of Mildred Bennett’s chief sources for The World of Willa Cather (1951), and was instrumental in setting up what is now the Willa Cather Foundation in Red Cloud.

Wallace, John Laurie (1864-1953). Scottish-American painter. Born in Ireland to Scottish parents, John Wallace attended the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts where he became a favorite student of and frequent model for painter Thomas Eakins. Wallace first taught at the Art Institute of Chicago while also serving as director of the Society of Artists. In 1891 he moved to Omaha, NE, to teach at the short-lived Academy of Fine Arts and afterwards established a successful portrait practice and founded the Omaha Art Guild. In 1937, Wallace painted a portrait of Willa Cather’s friend, Bishop George Allen Beecher.

Litchfield, Ethel Herr Jones (1876-after 1967). Pianist; Cather’s Pittsburgh friend. Born in New Brighton, PA, near Pittsburgh, to the Reverend David and Sarah Jones, Ethel traveled to Vienna, Austria, at age twenty to study with Theodor Leschetizky with the aim of becoming a concert pianist. However, Dr. Lawrence Litchfield followed her there to court her. They married in Vienna in 1898 and returned to Pittsburgh. They had three children, Ethel Carver (1899), Lawrence, Jr. (1900), and Margaret (1903). While her children were young, she largely gave up performing but entertained visiting musicians in their home in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood, where Cather met them in 1902. Cather, May Willard, Ethel Litchfield, and Isabelle McClung formed, as Cather would later recall, a “little group” that “melted together” (#1540). It has been suggested that Litchfield’s decision to give up her musical career for marriage informed Cather’s story “The Garden Lodge” (1905). As Litchfield’s children grew older, however, she returned to the concert stage. After the 1930 death of her husband, she moved to New York City, where she dined frequently with Cather and Edith Lewis and enjoyed listening with them to recordings of Yehudi and Hepzibah Menuhin.