Hambourg, Isabelle McClung (1877-1938). Cather’s longtime friend. Cather met Isabelle McClung, the daughter of a socially prominent, Pittsburgh (PA) family, in 1899 in the dressing room of actress Lizzie Hudson Collier. McClung seems to have been the first woman to reciprocate Cather’s romantic affections. In 1901, McClung invited Cather to live in her family’s large home in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh. She and Cather traveled together to Europe in 1902, and McClung accompanied Cather on a visit home to Nebraska in 1905. After Cather moved to New York City in 1906, she frequently visited McClung in Pittsburgh, finding the familiar house a congenial place to write, and McClung visited New York City, staying with Cather and Edith Lewis. Cather and McClung also rented a vacation cabin in Cherry Valley, NY, in 1911, and traveled together to Virginia in 1913. In late 1915, shortly after the death of her father, Judge Samuel McClung, Isabelle announced her intention to marry violinist Jan Hambourg. Cather reacted negatively to the marriage (which took place in 1916) but eventually reconciled herself to it, enjoying long visits with the Hambourgs in Toronto, Ontario, in 1921 and France in 1923 and 1935. Cather and Edith Lewis also spent time with the Hambourgs in Paris is 1930 and 1935. The latter trip occurred after Isabelle sought treatment in the U.S. for the kidney disease that killed her several years later in Italy. Her death came only four months after Cather’s brother Douglass died, leaving her feeling bereft. “No other living person cared as much about my work, through thirty-eight years,” she wrote her brother Roscoe (#2137). After Isabelle’s death, Jan sent to Cather the six hundred letters from Cather to Isabelle in his possession, and Cather destroyed them, although a few letters from Isabelle and Cather postcards to Isabelle are extant.

Smith, Giles Jenkins (1833-1921). Virginia farmer; Charles Cather’s cousin. Born in Virginia, Giles was a son of Samuel Smith, a brother of Emily Caroline Smith Cather, Willa Cather’s grandmother. He lived and farmed all his life in the Back Creek Valley area of Frederick County, VA. He and his wife, Dorothy, whom he married in 1876, had one child, who died young. Willa Cather visited Giles and his wife on a 1913 trip Back Creek Valley.

Pugh, Smith Jonathan (1842-1907). Frederick County farmer. Born in Virginia, son of Jesse Jerome Pugh and Elizabeth Larrick Pugh, Smith Pugh was a descendant of Job Pugh, founder of Pugh Town, VA, which later became Gainesboro, VA. Smith Pugh may be the S. J. Pugh who served with the 18th Virginia Regiment during the Civil War. He farmed in the Back Creek Valley area, raising sheep, and married Annie Pool in 1868; they had thirteen children, of whom ten survived.