Chase, Mary Ellen (1887-1973). American educator, critic, novelist, and memoirist. Born and raised in Blue Hill, ME, Chase received her BA from the University of Maine in 1909 and her MA in 1918 and PhD in 1922 from the University of Minnesota. After serving four years as assistant professor of English at Minnesota, she became an associate professor at Smith College. At Chase’s urging, Smith also offered her companion, Margaret Eliot Macgregor, an assistant professorship. By the time Chase and MacGregor met Cather on Grand Manan Island in 1929, Chase was a well-established novelist of regional fiction set in her home state. After they met, Chase sent Cather her autobiographical reminiscences The Golden Asse, and Other Essays (1929), but Cather resisted her invitation to speak publicly at Smith. Willa Cather’s nieces Virginia Cather and Mary Virginia Auld came in contact with Chase during their years studying at Smith, but Cather soured on Chase, warning Virginia Cather that Chase was “tricky, and terribly, terribly vain” (#2324). After Macgregor’s early death, Chase shared a home with Smith College classics professor Eleanor Duckett. Although Chase and MacGregor had contemplated building a cottage on Grand Manan, Chase and Duckett built a vacation home at Petit Man Point, ME. Chase retired from Smith in 1955 and died in Northampton, MA.

Cather, Mary Virginia Boak (1850-1931) (“Virginia” or “Jenny”). Cather’s mother. Born in Virginia to William Lee Boak and Rachel Seibert Boak, Virginia was educated in Baltimore, MD, and was a schoolteacher until her marriage to Charles Fectigue Cather in 1872. Her husband’s family were primarily Union supporters during the Civil War while her family supported the Confederacy (three brothers served in the Confederate Army although their mother opposed slavery). After her marriage she tried to help unite the divided family. Four of her children, Willa, Roscoe, Charles Douglas, and Jessica Virginia, were born in Virginia, while three, James Donald, Elsie Margaret, and John Esten, were born in Nebraska after the family moved there in 1883. Despite occasional differences, Cather remained in affectionate contact with her mother, who remained in Red Cloud, NE, where the family settled in 1884. After her husband’s death in 1928 Virginia Cather suffered a stroke while visiting her children and their families in California. She spent nearly three years in a sanitarium in Pasadena, CA, unable to speak. Willa Cather visited her there several times but was unable to travel quickly enough from Grand Manan to Red Cloud for her funeral and interment after she died in Pasadena in 1931. Virginia Cather was the prototype for Victoria Templeton in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932), which Willa Cather completed shortly before her mother’s death.

Mellen, Mary Virginia Auld (1906-1982) (“Virginia,” “M.V.”). Cather's niece. Born in Red Cloud, NE, to Jessica Cather Auld and James William Auld, Mary Virginia graduated from Red Cloud High School in 1924 and then spent a year at Dana Hall in Wellesley, MA, to qualify for admission to Smith College in Northampton, MA. In 1929 she received an A.B. in psychology from Smith and then moved to New York City, where she found work at Lord & Taylor before telling her aunt of her arrival. In 1930, probably with Willa Cather's help, she secured a position in the Circulation Department of the New York Public Library. In 1931, she entered the library's internal training school and in 1932 was assigned to the Tremont branch library in the Bronx. After Mary Virginia’s parents divorced in 1933 Cather took a quasi-parental role. She paid for vacations and when, in 1935, Mary Virginia married Richard (Dick) Mellen, a graduate of Harvard Medical School and roommate of her brother William Thomas Auld at Amherst College, she supervised wedding arrangements. After Dick was commissioned as a doctor in the Air Force, Mary Virginia—much to Cather’s regret—accompanied him to Chattanooga, TN, where he was assigned. In Cather's will, Mary Virginia was designated a beneficiary of the literary estate.