Jewett, Sarah Orne (1849-1909). American short story writer and novelist. Born in South Berwick, ME, Jewett began sharing homes in Boston (at 148 Charles Street) and Manchester-on-the-Sea, MA, with Annie Adams Fields in 1881, while continuing to live in her family home in South Berwick with her mother and sister part of the year. She was associated throughout her career with the Atlantic Monthly, and her best-known work, The Country of the Pointed Firs, was serialized there in 1896. Like much of her fiction, it focused on rural and small town New England life. By the time Cather met Jewett at 148 Charles Street in 1908, Jewett had largely ceased writing because of a spinal concussion she suffered in a 1902 carriage accident. She wrote important letters of advice to Cather in 1908, criticizing her decision to write "The Gull's Road" (1908) from the perspective of a male character, which she called "something of a masquerade" (27 Nov. 1908), and urging her to give up her editorial work at McClure's Magazine so she could focus full-time on fiction writing (13 Dec. 1908). After Jewett's death in South Berwick in 1909, Cather often referred to her and her advice about writing. Cather edited The Best Stories of Sarah Orne Jewett (1925) for publisher Houghton Mifflin, and in her preface classed The Country of the Pointed Firs with Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter as one of "three American books which have the possibility of a long, long life."

Thomas, Rose Emily Fay (1852-1929). Club president and activist. Rose Emily Fay was born in St Albans, VT, to Charlotte Emily Hopkins and Charles A. Fay. Rose moved to Chicago, IL, in 1878, and through her sister Amy she quickly became acquainted with prominent members of the Chicago music scene including Theodore Thomas, the Chicago conductor whom she married in 1890. During the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893 she organized musical clubs across the country into the National Federation of Musical Clubs and served as its first president. In 1899 she organized the Anti-Cruelty Society, a women’s group devoted to preventing animal cruelty.

Druhe, Leila Nielsen (1893-1976). Californian mezzo-soprano singer. Leila Nielsen was born in Oxford, NE, to Andrew and Meta Nielsen. After Nielsen’s father died in 1894, she lived with her mother, sister, Ada Nielsen, and grandmother, Meta Meyer, in Emerson, NE. Nielsen’s mother remarried in Sept. 1900 to T. Fred Mackprang and soon after, Nielsen’s half-sister Margaret Mackprang was born. At the time of her high school graduation in 1910, Nielsen was already heavily involved in singing and performed at her graduation ceremony. Nielsen attended the University of California, where she joined the Alpha Chi Omega sorority and graduated in 1915. In 1918, Nielsen married Rudolph C. Druhe in Los Angeles, CA, and moved to Berkeley, CA. The Druhes frequently visited Leila Druhe’s mother in Oxford, NE where Druhe would sing during the Presbyterian church services. Druhe had a son, David, in 1920. Throughout her life, Druhe was active in the Etude club and regularly performed, especially in California. Cather was likely acquainted with Druhe through mutual friend Katherine Foote Raffy.