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).

Smith, Dorothy Hiett (1834-1917). Frederick County, VA, resident. Born in western Virginia, Dorothy Hiett grew up in Hampshire County, adjacent to Frederick County, VA. She married Giles Smith in 1876; they had one child, who died young. Cather visited Giles and Dorothy on a 1913 trip Back Creek Valley.

Pugh, Annie Eliza Pool (1847-1924). Virginia acquaintance of the Cather family. Born in Frederick County, Virginia, Annie Pool married farmer Smith Jonathan Pugh in 1868. They had thirteen children, of whom ten survived to adulthood. Widowed in 1907, in 1920 she lived with her son Upton Pugh (and grandson Smithey Pugh, Jr.) on their farm in Back Creek Valley. On Cather’s trip to Frederick County in 1913, she visited with Annie Pugh, who was probably a friend or acquaintance of her parents, Charles Cather and Virginia Cather.

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.

Brodie, Elizabeth M. Potts (1874-1939) ("Lizzie"). Virginia hotel proprietor. Born in Pennsylvania, a daughter of Joseph Potts and Martha Brooks Potts, Elizabeth Potts moved with her family to Back Creek Valley in Frederick County, VA. She married David A. Brodie in 1906; by 1920 the couple was living in Washington, DC, where he worked for the Department of Agriculture. Cather and Isabelle McClung stayed with Lizzie during part of their stay in Frederick County in 1913, possibly as paying guests or boarders in Gore, VA. Lizzie kept in touch with members of the Cather family, writing to Willa Cather to inform her of the death of Lillian Gore later in 1913. She was buried in Mount Hebron Cemetery in Winchester, VA.