Cather, Charles Fectigue (1848-1928). Cather’s father. Charles Fectigue (possibly Fectique) Cather was born in the Back Creek Valley of Virginia, north of Winchester. His family were sheep raisers who were largely, but not entirely, Union supporters during the Civil War. He married Mary Virginia Seibert Boak, daughter of Confederate supporters, in 1872. In 1883 he and his family followed his parents, William and Caroline Cather, and brother George to Webster County in Nebraska, where various cousins and uncles had also settled. Initially he ran a ranch in the county but soon moved his family into the town of Red Cloud, where he had an insurance and real estate business. Four of his children, Willa, Roscoe, Charles, and Jessica, were born in Virginia, while three, James, Elsie, and John, were born in Nebraska. Cather’s relationship with her father was very warm: she made regular visits to her parents in Red Cloud and especially enjoyed her father’s letters expressing appreciation of her novels. A week after she concluded a visit to her ailing father in Red Cloud, he died of heart disease. He served as the prototype for Hillary Templeton in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932).

McClure, Samuel Sidney (1857-1949) (“S.S.”). Irish-born American publisher. McClure immigrated to the U.S. at age nine, living with his family in Indiana. Despite poverty and the limited education he had received in Ireland, he graduated from high school and then Knox College in Illinois. He then moved to Boston, MA, where from 1882 to 1884 he edited the Wheelman, a bicycling magazine. Despite opposition from her parents, he married his Knox College classmate Harriet Hurd in 1883. The couple had four biological children (Eleanor, Bess, Mary, and Robert), and adopted one (Enrico). In 1884, S.S. started McClure’s Syndicate, which placed fiction in newspapers across the country. In 1893 with his college classmate John Sanborn Phillips he started McClure's Magazine, which was best-known for the "muckraking" exposés by writers such as Ida Tarbell and Lincoln Steffens, but which also published literature. After his cousin H.H. McClure, who worked for the McClure Syndicate, brought Cather to S.S. McClure’s attention, McClure, Phillips & Co. brought out Cather’s first book of fiction, The Troll Garden (1905). When most of the editorial staff, including Steffens and Tarbell, resigned from McClure’s in 1906, he hired Cather as an editor; she later became managing editor. After she left her position at McClure’s in 1912 and when S. S. McClure had lost control of the magazine still bearing his name, Cather ghost wrote his autobiography (McClure’s serial 1913-1914, book publication 1914). McClure made repeated—and ultimately failed—attempts to reestablish himself in journalism and magazine publishing, often trying to enlist Cather in these enterprises. She almost went with him to Europe in 1915 to report on the war for the Evening Mail, and she remained personally loyal to her mercurial and often-irresponsible former employer. He served as the prototype for Marcus O’Mally, editor of the Outcry, in her story “Ardessa” (1918), and it has been suggested that Cather modeled the courtship and marriage between Myra and Oswald Henshaw in My Mortal Enemy (1926) on that of the McClures.

Bryan, William Jennings (1860-1925). American orator and politician. Born and raised in Illinois, William Jennings Bryan graduated from Illinois College and studied at the Union Law College in Chicago. He married Mary Elizabeth Baird in 1884, and in 1887 they moved to Lincoln, NE, where he practiced law; he soon turned his attention primarily to politics, being elected as a Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1890. Amid populist political ferment, he was selected as the Democratic candidate for president in 1896, and again in 1900 and 1908. From 1900 he earned his living primarily by touring as an orator. President Woodrow Wilson chose him to be Secretary of State in 1913, but he resigned because of his opposition to U.S. entry into World War I. Later he promoted prohibition and was an activist against evolution, dying shortly after the so-called Scopes Monkey Trial, at which he served as counsel for the World Christian Fundamentalist Association. As a student at the University of Nebraska, Cather was apparently slightly acquainted with William and Mary Bryan. Political conflicts over the 1896 presidential election and Bryan’s populist program figure in the plots of O Pioneers! (1913) and “Two Friends” (1932), and a character in “The Best Years” (1948) is named for Bryan.

Parkes, William (1832-1915) (“Uncle Billy”). Red Cloud shoemaker. Born in Yorkshire, England, William Parkes immigrated to the U.S. in 1853. He married his wife Sarah in 1855 in Utah; they left Utah in 1859 and in 1879 came to Red Cloud, NE, where William’s brother John S. Parkes, also a shoemaker, had settled. Cather evidently knew both Parkes brothers during her childhood, and as an adult visited with them occasionally when she was in Red Cloud. Although he was not related to Cather she called him “Uncle Billy,” a term of affection.