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).

Gore, James Howard (1856-1939). American mathematics professor; Cather’s cousin. Born in Back Creek, VA, youngest son of Mahlon and Sidney Cather Gore (Willa Cather’s great-aunt), James showed early interest in the sciences. He graduated from Columbian University (now George Washington University) in 1877 and did post-graduate work abroad, returning to teach mathematics and geodesy at Columbian and at the Corcoran Scientific School; he received a PhD in 1888. In 1889 he married Swedish-born Lillian Sparrendahl, whom Cather admired. They had one daughter, Sidney, who died at age fifteen. Gore was a founder of the National Geographic Society and was associated with various scientific expeditions, but he was not part of actual polar expeditions, as Cather’s letters seem to imply. He was a member of several foreign orders from France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Cather stayed with the Gores for part of her 1901 visit to Washington, DC. In The Professor’s House (1925), Tom Outland finds that the people he has to deal with in Washington, D.C., are obsessed with receiving orders and decorations.