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.

Cather, Mary Virginia Boak (1850-1931) (“Virginia” or “Jenny”). Cather’s mother. Born in the 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.

Ickis, Elizabeth Cather (1915-1978) (half of the “twinnies”). Cather’s niece. Elizabeth and her twin sister Margaret were born in Lander, WY, to Roscoe and Meta Cather, and moved with the family to Casper, WY, in 1921. Elizabeth and Margaret both attended the University of Colorado, graduating in 1937, and visited Willa Cather and Edith Lewis on Grand Manan during the summers of 1936 and 1937. In Cather’s later letters to them she often refers back to their summer visits as a magical time. Elizabeth moved to Colusa, CA, with her parents in 1937 and married Lynn S. Ickis, an electrical engineer, in April 1938. They lived in Cleveland, OH, and had two children, Margaret and John.

Shannon, Margaret Cather (1915-1996) (half of the “twinnies”). Cather’s niece. Margaret and her twin sister Elizabeth were born in Lander, WY, to Roscoe and Meta Cather, and moved with the family to Casper, WY, in 1921. Elizabeth and Margaret both attended the University of Colorado, graduating in 1937, and visited Willa Cather and Edith Lewis on Grand Manan during the summers of 1936 and 1937. In Cather’s later letters to them, she often refers back to their summer visits as a magical time. Margaret moved to Colusa, CA, with her parents in 1937. After she married Richard Shannon in September 1938, she moved with him to Boston, MA, where he earned an MBA from Harvard University in Cambridge. In 1940 they moved to the New York City area, where their first child, Richard, was born in 1943. The Shannons moved to Washington, DC, in 1944, where their daughter Kathryne was born. Cather did not see Margaret again after she left New York, and Margaret’s other three children, Patricia, Margaret, and Elizabeth, were born after Cather’s death. Kathryne and Patricia became caretakers for a large family archive of letters preserved by their mother, which they donated to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln as the Roscoe and Meta Cather Collection.

Mellen, Mary Virginia Auld (1906-1982) (“Virginia,” “M.V.”). Cather's niece. Born in Red Cloud, NE, to Jessica Cather Auld and James William Auld, Mary Virginia graduated from Red Cloud High School in 1924 and then spent a year at Dana Hall in Wellesley, MA, to qualify for admission to Smith College in Northampton, MA. In 1929 she received an A.B. in psychology from Smith and then moved to New York City, where she found work at Lord & Taylor before telling her aunt of her arrival. In 1930, probably with Willa Cather's help, she secured a position in the Circulation Department of the New York Public Library. In 1931, she entered the library's internal training school and in 1932 was assigned to the Tremont branch library in the Bronx. After Mary Virginia’s parents divorced in 1933 Cather took a quasi-parental role. She paid for vacations and when, in 1935, Mary Virginia married Richard (Dick) Mellen, a graduate of Harvard Medical School and roommate of her brother William Thomas Auld at Amherst College, she supervised wedding arrangements. After Dick was commissioned as a doctor in the Air Force, Mary Virginia—much to Cather’s regret—accompanied him to Chattanooga, TN, where he was assigned. In Cather's will, Mary Virginia was designated a beneficiary of the literary estate.

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.

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.