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.

Lamy, Jean-Baptiste (1814-1888). French Roman Catholic Archbishop and missionary. Born in Lempdes in Auvergne, France, Jean-Baptiste Lamy attended the seminary of Clermont and then the seminary of Mont Ferrand, where he met fellow student Joseph Machebeuf. Lamy was ordained in 1838 and assigned to a parish in the town of Chapdes, France. In 1839, he and Machebeuf traveled to the U.S., where Lamy served at a parish in Danville, OH, for 8 years. In 1849, he was appointed the head of the newly formed Vicariate of New Mexico and appointed Machebeuf as his Vicar-General. Lamy finally arrived in New Mexico in 1851, where he conflicted with priests who had served under a Mexican bishop. The Vatican elevated Lamy to Archbishop of Sante Fe in 1875; he retired in 1884. During their 1925 trip to New Mexico, Willa Cather and Edith Lewis became interested in the lives of Lamy and Machebeuf, and Cather based Jean Marie Latour in Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) on Lamy.

Machebeuf, Joseph P. (1812-1889). French Roman Catholic Bishop and missionary. Born in Riom, France, Joseph Machebeuf entered the seminary of Mont Ferrand, where he met fellow student Jean-Baptiste Lamy. Machebeuf was ordained in 1836 and served as a curate in Le Cendre. In 1839, Machebeuf and Lamy traveled to the U.S., where Machebeuf served as a curate in Tiffin, OH and then in 1841 as a priest in Sandusky, OH. When Lamy was appointed the head of the newly formed Vicariate of New Mexico in 1849, he appointed Machebeuf as his Vicar-General. He served as priest at Albuquerque (1853–1858) and at Santa Fe (1858–1860) before being transferred to Colorado, where he was elevated Vicar Apostolic of Colorado and Utah in 1868 and then Bishop of Denver in 1887. During their 1925 trip to New Mexico, Willa Cather and Edith Lewis became interested in the lives of Lamy and Machebeuf, and Cather based Joseph Vaillant in Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) on Machebeuf.

Wheelwright, Mary Cabot (1878-1958). American arts patron. Born in Boston, MA, only child of Andrew C. Wheelwright and Sarah P. Cabot Wheelwright, Mary Wheelwright was educated at home, and traveled extensively with her parents. After her mother’s death in 1917, Mary Wheelwright travelled to New Mexico, staying at the San Gabriel ranch near Alcalde and travelling on the Navajo reservation, where she met traditional Navajo medicine man and singer Hosteen Klah. He worked with her to translate and record Native practices. In 1937 she established a museum of Navajo religion in Santa Fe, renamed the Wheelwright Museum in 1977. Wheelwright bought a ranch, Los Luceros, near Alcalde, in 1924; she spent summers at the family home at Mount Desert, Northeast Harbor, ME. Cather may have known of her in the Southwest (Cather also stayed at the San Gabriel Ranch in 1925) or in Northeast Harbor, where Cather spent summers in the 1940s.

Heinemann, William (1863-1920). British publisher. Born in Surrey, England, the son of a German banker and an English mother, Heinemann aspired to a musical career. Instead he joined the music-publishing firm of Nicolas Trübner. He founded his own company in 1896; one of the first books published was Hall Caine’s best-seller, The Bondman (1896). Heinemann also published Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Joseph Conrad, as well as translations and educational books. After William Heinemann died, Frank Doubleday bought a majority interest. Cather apparently met Heinemann through her work for McClure’s Magazine, and until 1931 Heinemann’s company published most of her books although he declined The Song of the Lark (1915).

Brandeis, Louis Dembitz (1856-1941). American attorney and Supreme Court Justice. Born in Louisville, KY, to German Jewish parents who fled Austria after the Revolution of 1848, Brandeis was educated in Dresden, Germany, and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1875. In 1879 he and Samuel Warren established the law firm of Warren and Brandeis in Boston, MA. He married Alice Goldmark in 1891, and together they embraced progressive causes, especially labor reform. The National Consumers League, in which Alice’s sisters Pauline and Josephine were active, enlisted Louis Brandeis to argue Muller v. Oregon (1908), a case defending maximum working hours for women workers, before the U.S. Supreme Court; the “Brandeis brief,” consisting primarily of sociological data gathered by the Goldmark sisters rather than legal argument, revolutionized constitutional law. From 1905 to 1913, he battled in court against J.P. Morgan’s attempts to create a railroad monopoly by merging the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad with the Boston & Maine Railroad. President Woodrow Wilson appointed Brandeis to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1916, and he served until 1939. Willa Cather met the Brandeises in 1907-1908 when she was on assignment for McClure’s Magazine and also spent time in the Brandeis home when she made later visits to Annie Fields. She last saw Louis Brandeis in New York City, where he was visiting the Goldmark family, in 1913.

Goldmark, Josephine Clara (1877-1950). American social reformer. Born in Brooklyn, NY, to Polish and Czech Jewish parents whose families fled Austria after the Revolution of 1848, Goldmark earned a BA in English from Bryn Mawr College in 1898; she then studied an additional year and tutored at Barnard College. Her sister Pauline introduced her to Florence Kelley of the National Consumers League, which sparked her interest in what became her life’s work, social research and reform, with an emphasis on working conditions for women and children. Cather met Josephine Goldmark and her sisters Pauline and Alice (who married Louis Dembitz Brandeis and lived in Boston) when she was on assignment in Boston for McClure’s Magazine in 1907-1908. Josephine Goldmark and Cather became lifelong friends, although extant correspondence is scant. Cather admired Goldmark’s book Pilgrims of ’48: One Man’s Part in the Austrian Revolution of 1848, and a Family Migration to America (1930), about the Goldmark, Wehle, Dembitz, and Brandeis families during the Austrian revolution and their lives in the U.S. (Josephine’s mother was a Wehle). In later years she and her sister Pauline lived in Hartsdale, NY. Josephine died in White Plains, NY.

Goldmark, Pauline Dorothea (1874-1962). American social reformer. Born in Brooklyn, NY, to Polish and Czech Jewish parents whose families fled Austria after the Revolution of 1848, Goldmark earned a BA in biology from Bryn Mawr College in 1896. While studying two additional years at Barnard College she volunteered with the New York State chapter of the National Consumers League (NCL), and sociological research and reform became her life’s work, in which she also enlisted her sister Josephine. Cather met Pauline Goldmark and her sisters Josephine and Alice (who married Louis D. Brandeis and lived in Boston) when she was on assignment in Boston for McClure’s Magazine in 1907-1908. Pauline Goldmark and Cather became lifelong friends, although extant correspondence is sparse. In 1910, Pauline sent Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant to Cather with a proposed article based on NCL research, and she was also instrumental in placing a series of widely-noticed McClure’s articles by Susan Ainslie Clark on working girls and women based in New York City similarly based on NCL research. In later years she and her sister Josephine lived together in Hartsdale, NY, where Pauline died.

Mason, Alpheus Thomas (1899-1989). American professor and biographer. Born in Maryland, Alpheus Mason graduated from Dickinson College in 1920 and received his PhD from Princeton in 1923. He joined the faculty of Princeton in 1925, retiring in 1968, then serving as visiting professor at other universities. His specialty was constitutional law and the Supreme Court. Cather read his Brandeis: A Free Man’s Life (1946), but felt that Mason had not captured the character of Louis Brandeis, whom she had met in Boston while working for McClure’s.

Shakespeare, William (1564-1616). English playwright, actor, and poet. Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest playwright of the English language. While not much is known definitively about his life, he was a member of Lord Chamberlain’s Men, a company of theatrical players, beginning in 1594 (the group later changed their name to the King’s Men). From 1590 to 1613, he wrote thirty-seven plays that continue to be widely performed. Cather’s lifelong love for Shakespeare’s work began in childhood as the Cather family had several volumes of Shakespeare in their book collection. While at the University of Nebraska, she took four semesters of Shakespeare and in 1891 published a two-part essay, “Shakespeare and Hamlet” in the Nebraska State Journal. Her fiction is filled with allusions to Shakespeare. In her later years, she formed an informal Shakespeare book club with the child prodigies Yehudi, Hepzibah, and Yaltah Menuhin and spent the last winter of her life reading his works.