Brockway, Virginia Cather (1912-1984) (“West Virginia”). Cather's niece. Born in Lander, WY, to Roscoe Cather and Meta Schaper Cather, Virginia graduated from Natrona County High School in Casper, WY, in 1929. She received an A.B. in English from Smith College in Northampton, MA, in 1933, the same year Willa Cather received an honorary doctorate there. In 1934, she enrolled in the University of Chicago School of Social Services and was, for a time, a social worker. She married John Hadley Brockway, a Navy officer, in 1936. They moved frequently until his retirement from the Navy. She had one child, son George. In letters, Willa Cather sometimes calls her "West Virginia" to distinguish her from her cousin Mary Virginia Auld because Virginia Cather's birthplace in Wyoming was farther west than Mary Virginia's in Nebraska.

Ickis, Elizabeth Cather (1915-1978) (half of the “twinnies”). Cather’s niece. Elizabeth and her twin sister Margaret were born in Lander, WY, to Roscoe and Meta Cather, and moved with the family to Casper, WY, in 1921. Elizabeth and Margaret both attended the University of Colorado, graduating in 1937, and visited Willa Cather and Edith Lewis on Grand Manan during the summers of 1936 and 1937. In Cather’s later letters to them she often refers back to their summer visits as a magical time. Elizabeth moved to Colusa, CA, with her parents in 1937 and married Lynn S. Ickis, an electrical engineer, in April 1938. They lived in Cleveland, OH, and had two children, Margaret and John.

Shannon, Margaret Cather (1915-1996) (half of the “twinnies”). Cather’s niece. Margaret and her twin sister Elizabeth were born in Lander, WY, to Roscoe and Meta Cather, and moved with the family to Casper, WY, in 1921. Elizabeth and Margaret both attended the University of Colorado, graduating in 1937, and visited Willa Cather and Edith Lewis on Grand Manan during the summers of 1936 and 1937. In Cather’s later letters to them, she often refers back to their summer visits as a magical time. Margaret moved to Colusa, CA, with her parents in 1937. After she married Richard Shannon in September 1938, she moved with him to Boston, MA, where he earned an MBA from Harvard University in Cambridge. In 1940 they moved to the New York City area, where their first child, Richard, was born in 1943. The Shannons moved to Washington, DC, in 1944, where their daughter Kathryne was born. Cather did not see Margaret again after she left New York, and Margaret’s other three children, Patricia, Margaret, and Elizabeth, were born after Cather’s death. Kathryne and Patricia became caretakers for a large family archive of letters preserved by their mother, which they donated to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln as the Roscoe and Meta Cather Collection.