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.

Ogden, Rollo (1855-1937). American writer and newspaper editor. Born in New York, of an old New England family, Rollo Ogden became a Presbyterian minister in Ohio. He married Susan M. Mitchell; they had four children. In 1887 he went to New York to write, and translated the Spanish-language works of several South American writers. He joined the New York Evening Post in 1891, serving as editor from 1903 to 1920. In 1922 Ogden became editor of the New York Times, serving until his death. Ogden had many literary contacts, including J.M. Barrie and Cather; he suggested that Cather use his translation of a Spanish verse in the 1937 revised edition of The Song of the Lark (1915).