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.

Lewis, Edith Labaree (1881-1972). Magazine editor, advertising copywriter, and Cather's domestic partner. Born in Lincoln, NE, to Henry Euclid Lewis and Lillie Gould Lewis, Edith Lewis attended the preparatory school associated with the University of Nebraska, earning college credits from the University before transferring to Smith College in Northampton, MA, in 1899. She received an A.B. in English from Smith in 1902 and returned home to teach elementary school. She met Willa Cather in the summer of 1903 at the home of Sarah Harris, publisher of the Lincoln Courier. Moving to New York City soon afterward, Lewis settled into a studio on Washington Square and found work at the Century Publishing Company. Cather was her guest when she visited the city from Pittsburgh. In 1906, at Cather's suggestion, Lewis applied for a position as an editorial proofreader at McClure's Magazine, and the two women worked together on the McClure's staff for six years. In 1908, they moved into a shared apartment at 82 Washington Place, and then, in 1912, to Five Bank Street. Lewis left McClure's in 1915 to become managing editor of Every Week Magazine, where she stayed until the magazine folded in 1918. In 1919 she began a long career as an advertising copywriter at the J. Walter Thompson Co. In 1926 Edith Lewis acquired the land on which she and Cather built their cottage on Grand Manan Island. When they lost their apartment on Bank Street to subway construction in 1927, they shared quarters at the Grosvenor Hotel when they were both in New York City. In 1932 they took an apartment at 570 Park Avenue. Throughout their relationship, Lewis was closely involved in Cather's creative process, reading and editing her work in pre-publication forms. Cather's will appointed Lewis as executor of her literary estate and a beneficiary of her literary trust. Lewis authorized E.K. Brown as Cather's first biographer and published her own memoir of Cather, Willa Cather Living (1953). She remained in their Park Avenue apartment after Cather's death and died there after a long period of illness and invalidism. She is buried at Cather's side in Jaffrey, NH.

Mrs. Winn. American housekeeper. A person Willa Cather identifies as Mrs. Winn cleaned her and Edith Lewis’s 5 Bank Street apartment from at least 1919-1924. No further information is available about this person.

Atherton, Marguerite Richardson (1889-after 1940). Cather's Red Cloud friend.Born in Red Cloud, NE, the younger daughter of William N. and Elizabeth Richardson, Marguerite graduated from the Red Cloud high school in 1908 with Willa Cather’s sister, Elsie. She attended a school in St. Joseph, MO, and then Valparaiso University in Indiana. After her father’s death, she and her mother went to California, where her elder sister lived. Marguerite married Wallace Atherton, a railroad agent, in 1926; they lived in San Francisco and had one son, Wallace junior. Willa Cather heard news of Marguerite through Elsie, and visited her in San Francisco in 1929.

Anderson, Marjorie (1854-1924) (“Margie”). Cather family servant. Born in Back Creek Valley, VA, the daughter of Mary Ann and Asa Anderson, Marjorie accompanied the Charles Cather family to Nebraska, living with them for the rest of her life. She was especially devoted to the Cather children, who loved her in return. In her later years she became shy and reclusive. Cather based several characters on Marjorie: Mahailey in One of Ours (1922), Marty in the poem, “Poor Marty” (1931), and Mandy in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932).

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.

Cowley, Isaac (1833-1896). Webster County farmer and postmaster. Born on the Isle of Man, Cowley married Nancy Jane Carr in Illinois; the couple came to Webster County, NE, from Illinois in 1873, establishing a farm in western Batin precinct. Their only surviving son, Charles, was born in 1876. Cowley was postmaster of the rural Catherton post office from 1876 to 1887. He built one of the first frame houses in the area in 1895. Willa Cather recalled that when her family lived on the William Cather farm in 1883-85, she would ride to the Cowley farm to pick up mail to distribute to their neighbors in the New Virginia area of Webster County.

Greenslet, Ferris (1875-1959). American editor and writer. Born in Glens Falls, NY, Ferris Greenslet earned a BA (1897) from Wesleyan University and a PhD (1900) from Columbia University. He served as associate editor at the Atlantic Monthly from 1902 to 1907, and married Ella Stoothoff Hulst in 1903; they had two children, Marguerite (born 1904) and George (born 1906). As an author he specialized in biography. He became literary editor at Houghton Mifflin, the Boston publisher of the Atlantic, c. 1908 and was socially and professionally acquainted with Annie Adams Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett, who may have introduced him to Cather. He evidently solicited Cather to submit Alexander’s Bridge (1912), her first published novel, to Houghton Mifflin. In 1910, when Greenslet became editor in chief of the trade department, Roger Scaife divided his shares as a director of the company with him, and the two presented themselves to authors as partners, with Scaife handling book advertising and format and Greenslet negotiating contracts and supervising editing; when Greenslet was absent from the office, Scaife handled correspondence with Cather. Greenslet became a director of Houghton Mifflin in 1919 and manager of the trade department in 1933. Cather left Houghton Mifflin as a publisher for Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., because she became dissatisfied with the production and advertising of her books. However, she remained on cordial terms with Greenslet and undertook several projects for him after her departure. Her extant letters to him constitute one of the largest groups to a single correspondent.

Cotting, Charles L. (1849-1928). Red Cloud drugstore owner. Born in Bristol, Wisconsin, Cotting married Hannah Amelia Upson in 1874; they came from Illinois to Red Cloud, NE, in 1884, where they raised their two surviving daughters, Florence and Jennie. Cotting retired from business in 1924. His drugstore also carried books, including Cather's. She notes in her letters that he had featured The Song of the Lark (1916) in the store window and later couldn’t get enough copies of My Ántonia (1918) from Houghton Mifflin.

Muse, Ruhamah Ann Seibert (1822-1913). Willa Cather’s great-aunt. Born in Back Creek, VA, Ruhamah Seibert was a daughter of Jacob Seibert and Rhuhamah Lemmon Seibert, prototypes for Henry and Sapphira Colbert in Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940), and elder sister of Rachel Seibert Boak, Willa Cather’s grandmother. In 1847, Ruhamah Seibert married Robert Barnes Muse, a farmer in Back Creek Valley. They had three daughters and four sons. Widowed in 1875, Ruhamah Muse maintained the family farm with the help of her children.