Seymour, Elizabeth (c. 1859-1934) (“Bess,” “Bessie”). Cather’s cousin. Bess Seymour was born in Virginia to Sarah Boak (the elder sister of Willa Cather’s mother) and her first husband, Joseph D. Seymour. In 1883, Bess moved with Willa Cather’s family to Webster County, NE. Seymour lived in the Cather family home from 1883 to 1904, when she moved to the Webster County farm of her half brother, Will Andrews. Cather used her cousin’s name as a byline for the story “The Burglar’s Christmas” (1906), and it has been suggested that she served as a model for Aunt Tillie in The Song of the Lark (1915). Cather frequently mentions in letters to other family members that she received long letters from Seymour full of family news, and she urged her sister Elsie Cather to care for Seymour during her final illness and sent money to pay medical expenses.

Clutter, Kyd Cather (1872-1928). Webster County farmer; Cather’s cousin. Born in Cooper County, MO, where his parents had moved from Virginia after their marriage in 1871, Kyd Clutter was the son of J. Webster (Webb) Clutter and Alverna Cather Clutter. His parents divorced and his mother took him to live in Webster County, NE, with her parents, William Cather and Emily Caroline Cather. He remained with them after his mother’s death, attending school in Red Cloud along with his Cather cousins. In the 1890s he lived and worked on the farm of his uncle, George P. Cather, before going to Montana as a cowboy in 1896. After returning to Webster County, he married Mary (Marie) Boudreau, a French-Canadian from nearby Campbell, NE, in 1898; they had four children before moving to Red Cloud in 1912. Mary Clutter died in 1917. Kyd Clutter died a few days before his uncle, Charles F. Cather, whom he was said to resemble in person, speech, and conduct.

Yeiser, James (1878-1953) (“Jim”). Reporter; Cather's childhood friend. James Dillard Yeiser, born in Red Cloud, NE, was the youngest child of Baptist minister and Webster County judge George O. and Almira Dillard Yeiser. About the age of Cather’s brothers Roscoe and Douglass, he was one of the playmates of the Cather family, and part of the play-town of Sandy Point that they created. Jim Yeiser graduated from the Red Cloud high school in 1897, studied law at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln 1897-99, and then went to California, working as a reporter for the San Francisco Examiner until his retirement. Cather kept in occasional touch with him; he once wrote her that he would be happy to do a favor for the mayor of Sandy Point.

Burns, Lena Campbell Gore (1879-1955). Cather’s cousin. Born in Frederick County, VA, elder child of Perry and Laura Campbell Gore, Lena lived on the family farm until after her parents’ deaths, when she and her brother Walter moved to Winchester, VA. In 1914 she married Jacob A. Burns, of Heber Springs, AR, moving with him from there to Nowata County, OK, where she helped to raise a step-granddaughter.

Boak, Rachael Seibert (1816-1893). Cather’s grandmother. Born in Frederick County, VA, to Jacob and Rhuhamah Seibert, Rachael Seibert married William Lee Boak in 1830, when she was about fifteen. In 1845 the growing family moved to Washington, DC. They had nine children, with six surviving to adulthood; one son was killed in the Civil War while serving in the Confederate Army. Widowed in 1854, Mrs. Boak moved back to Frederick County; Willa Cather was born in her house. Later she joined the Charles Cather household and moved with them to Nebraska. Rachel Boak’s parents were prototypes for Sapphira and Henry Colbert in Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940), and she herself was a prototype for Rachel Blake in that novel and for the title character in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932).

Gore, Sidney Sophia Cather (1828-1906). Teacher, innkeeper; Cather’s great-aunt. Born in Back Creek Valley, VA, daughter of James and Ann Howard Cather, Sidney Cather married Mahlon Gore in 1847; they had three sons, Perry, James Howard, and Joshua. In 1854, despite opposition from her family, Sidney joined the Baptist church. Widowed in 1861, she was forced to sell her household goods to settle Mahlon’s debts. She then taught school and later was able to send her sons to college. During the Civil War, she sheltered and nursed both Union and Confederate soldiers, and after the war she continued to help the poor in her community. The town of Back Creek was renamed Gore after her. Willa Cather visited her great-aunt on her 1900 trip to Virginia, and they corresponded occasionally. Cather portrayed her as Mrs. Bywaters in Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940).

Hambourg, Isabelle McClung (1877-1938). Cather’s longtime friend. Cather met Isabelle McClung, the daughter of a socially prominent, Pittsburgh (PA) family, in 1899 in the dressing room of actress Lizzie Hudson Collier. McClung seems to have been the first woman to reciprocate Cather’s romantic affections. In 1901, McClung invited Cather to live in her family’s large home in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh. She and Cather traveled together to Europe in 1902, and McClung accompanied Cather on a visit home to Nebraska in 1905. After Cather moved to New York City in 1906, she frequently visited McClung in Pittsburgh, finding the familiar house a congenial place to write, and McClung visited New York City, staying with Cather and Edith Lewis. Cather and McClung also rented a vacation cabin in Cherry Valley, NY, in 1911, and traveled together to Virginia in 1913. In late 1915, shortly after the death of her father, Judge Samuel McClung, Isabelle announced her intention to marry violinist Jan Hambourg. Cather reacted negatively to the marriage (which took place in 1916) but eventually reconciled herself to it, enjoying long visits with the Hambourgs in Toronto, Ontario, in 1921 and France in 1923 and 1935. Cather and Edith Lewis also spent time with the Hambourgs in Paris is 1930 and 1935. The latter trip occurred after Isabelle sought treatment in the U.S. for the kidney disease that killed her several years later in Italy. Her death came only four months after Cather’s brother Douglass died, leaving her feeling bereft. “No other living person cared as much about my work, through thirty-eight years,” she wrote her brother Roscoe (#2137). After Isabelle’s death, Jan sent to Cather the six hundred letters from Cather to Isabelle in his possession, and Cather destroyed them, although a few letters from Isabelle and Cather postcards to Isabelle are extant.

Matheny, Nannie V. Andrews (1869-before 1950). American farm wife. Born in Virginia, daughter of Sarah Boak Seymore Andrews and Joseph Andrews, Nannie Andrews came to Webster County, NE, in the early 1880s to work for the George P. Cather family, with whom she was connected through her aunt, Mary Virginia Boak Cather. In 1886 she married William J. Matheny at the home of George Cather’s father, William Cather. She and her husband farmed in the western Catherton precinct, near Campbell, in Franklin County, NE, where they were living in 1920. In the early 1930s they moved to Buffalo County, NE, where they farmed with the help of their unmarried son, Frank H. Matheny. Willa Cather visited the Mathenys on their farm in September 1893. Other family members kept in occasional touch with them.