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 |
Carrie1, dear, the first day I got home from
Roosevelt Hospital I opened an envelope from Red
Cloud3. No letter, but the newspaper account of your brutal accident4. It laid me low. I lost all my
courage and didn’t try to get up or want to. Next day a letter came from Elsie5 telling me that Vernon6 had telephoned her that things were not quite so bad as the
home paper7 reported. But before that letter came I had a long night—in which I
remembered a great many things. I remembered even a crowded general store8, and a young girl shaking hands with me and
looking with at me with bright eyes. It is strange
how a whole lifetime can race through one’s mind in eight hours.
This has been a hard winter9 for both you and me, but perhaps the spring will bring better things.
My true love to you and to Mary10. You are both safe in a little house of memories which I keep for myself and which no one on earth can spoil for me. I spend many happy hours there.
Lovingly Willie February 21stInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1729.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1729
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Carrie Miner Sherwood1
- Date letter was written
- February 21 [1946]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is established by the February 8, 1946 report of Carrie Miner Sherwood's accident in the Red Cloud Commercial Advertiser.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- WCPM Collection, National Willa Cather Center, Red Cloud, NE
Individual Annotations
On 8 February 1946, the front page of the Red Cloud Commercial Advertiser reported that Mrs. Sherwood had been struck by a hit and run driver the evening before, fracturing her skull.
The Miner Brothers general store was the largest in the county in the 1880s and 1890s. Carrie Miner worked in the store, where Willa Cather first met her.
According to Cather’s death certificate, which was signed by breast cancer specialist Dr. William Crawford White, she was diagnosed with breast cancer in December 1945 and had a mastectomy on 16 January 1946.
Person Annotations
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.
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.
Foe, Vernon M. Story (1893-1982). Cather’s Red Cloud acquaintance. Born in Iowa, Vernon was the stepdaughter of Red Cloud, NE, salesman and clothing store owner Paul Storey, whom her mother, Fannie, married in 1898. After graduating from the Red Cloud high school, she attended the University of Nebraska and taught in Red Cloud. In 1919 she married attorney Howard S. Foe, with whom she had two sons. She died in Red Cloud.
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).
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Red Cloud Commercial Advertiser
