Crowell, Willard (1885-1963). Webster County farmer. Born in Indiana, Willard Crowell came to Webster County after 1900, probably to join his elder brothers Henry and Omer; he lived and farmed in the Batin area from 1910 into the 1930s. He and his wife, Adelma (known as Lulu), had four children, Clarence, Robert, Howard, and Geraldine. Crowell was elected sheriff in the 1930s. He also helped Cather manage Webster County properties she owned or had mortgages on; they sometimes had differences of opinion on these business matters, but she was concerned when he had suffered a disabling fall in August 1943.

Cather, Roscoe (1877-1945) (“Ross”). Cather’s brother. Roscoe was born in Virginia, the second child and oldest son of Charles and Virginia Cather. After graduating from Red Cloud (NE) High School in 1895, he taught country school for two years, attended the University of Nebraska in Lincoln for one year (1897-1898), taught high school in Carlton, NE, and Oxford, NE, and finally became superintendent of schools in Fullerton, NE. There he met fellow teacher Meta Schaper, whom he married in 1907. They relocated to Lander, WY, in 1909, where he opened an abstract office and where their three children, Virginia and twins Margaret and Elizabeth, were born. In 1921, they moved to Casper, WY, where Roscoe became president of the Wyoming Trust Company, and in 1937 to Colusa, CA, where Roscoe and his brother Douglass had acquired a controlling interest in the First Savings Bank of Colusa. Roscoe served as president of the bank until his death. Willa visited Roscoe and his family in Wyoming several times and shared important travel experiences with them, including a 1926 trip to New Mexico with Roscoe, Meta, and their children and a 1941 San Francisco vacation with Roscoe and Meta. She also relied on him to handle family-related business as well as personal financial matters, and he was one of her chief correspondents throughout her life. Roscoe served as a prototype for one of the twin brothers in the Templeton family in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932).

Cather, Charles Douglas (1880-1938) (“Douglass”). Cather’s brother. Born in Virginia and raised in Red Cloud, NE, Charles was third child and second son of Charles and Virginia Cather. As an adolescent, Douglass Cather helped his father supervise rented farm properties and worked as a messenger for the local Burlington & Missouri Railroad office. In 1897 he left Red Cloud for a position in Sterling, CO, and then took a position with at the Cheyenne, WY, office of the Burlington Railroad. In 1908 he traveled to Mexico, an experience that his sister gave to Emil Bergson in O Pioneers! (1913). By 1910 he was working for the Santa Fe railroad and living in Winslow, AZ, where Willa Cather visited him in 1912. He later achieved success in the oil business in California. Although he never married, Cather notes that during the last six or seven years of his life he had a relationship with Dorothy Rogers. Douglass visited Cather in New York City in December of 1937. His death in June 1938 left her devastated. Douglass served as a prototype for one of the twin brothers in the Templeton family in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932) and Hector the messenger boy brother in “The Best Years” (1948). His years working for the Burlington also inspired Cather’s many railroad worker characters in her novels, including Song of the Lark (1915) and The Professor’s House (1925). Few letters from this important sibling relationship have survived.

Cather, James Donald (1886-1966) (“Jim”). Cather’s brother. James was born in Red Cloud, NE, the fifth child and third son of Charles and Virginia Cather. James moved to Wyoming in 1907 to work with his brothers Douglass and Roscoe. In 1913 he married Ethel Garber, and owned and operated clothing stores first in Red Cloud and then Holyoke, CO, where the family settled for a time 1920 before returning to Red Cloud in 1922. The couple had two children, Helen Louise and Charles Edwin. In 1930 the family moved to California so James could work in the oil business with Douglass and his partners. Willa’s relationship with James was more distant than that with her brothers Douglass and Roscoe, who were closer to her own age, although she was very fond of his children.

Cather, John (1892-1959) (“Jack”). Cather’s brother. Born and raised in Red Cloud, NE, Jack was the seventh child and fourth son of Charles and Virginia Cather. He was nearly two decades younger than Willa Cather, and she was a doting older sister when he was a small boy. Because she missed him after her 1896 move to Pittsburgh, PA, she wrote several poems about him and the story “Jack-a-Boy” (1901). After graduating from Red Cloud High School in 1912, Jack studied for two years at University of Nebraska in Lincoln. With Willa Cather’s encouragement, in 1914 he enrolled at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh to study engineering. Willa Cather was then living in New York City but traveled to Pittsburgh to help him settle in and enjoyed visiting him and supported his decision to change his major to theater. It is not clear whether he graduated from Carnegie Tech but the British government trained him as a chemist so he could inspect munitions factories. While working in Smethport, PA, he met Irma Wells, and they married in 1918. They had two children, Catherine and Ella Faye. After World War I, he worked as a chemical engineer in the oil industry in Cincinnati, OH, Casper, WY, and Bradford, PA. In 1936 he moved to Whittier, CA, and became a business partner with his brothers Douglass and James in an oil production company. He died in Long Beach, CA. Willa Cather mentions him frequently in letters, but she seems to have had little contact with him and his family in later years, and no letters from her to him have surfaced.

Mousel, Beatrix Josephine Florance (1905-1994) (“Bicky”). Daughter of Cather's friend Beatrix Mizer Florance. Born in Illinois, only daughter of Sidney and Beatrix Mizer Florance, Beatrix grew up in Red Cloud, NE. She married Dr. Lloyd Mousel of Cambridge, NE, and they had three sons, Donald K. (1932-1994), David L. (b. 1942), and James (b. 1944). The family lived in Minnesota and later in the Seattle, WA, area. In the early 1950s Beatrix’s parents came to live near them in Washington. Cather probably knew the children of her friend Beatrix Mizer Florance from visits to Red Cloud in the 1920s.