Guide to Reading Letter Transcriptions
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| Textual Feature | Appearance |
|---|---|
| passage deleted with a strikethrough mark | |
| passage deleted by overwritten added letters | |
| passage added above the line | passage with added text above |
| passage added on the line | passage with added text inline |
| passage added in the margin | passage with text added in margin |
| handwritten addition to a typewritten letter | typed passage with added handwritten text |
| missing or unreadable text | missing text noted with "[illegible]" |
| uncertain transcriptions | word[?] |
| notes written by someone other than Willa Cather | Note in another's hand |
| printed letterhead text | printed text |
| text printed on postcards, envelopes, etc. | printed text |
| text of date and place stamps | stamped text |
| passage written by Cather on separate enclosure. | written text |
When I finished reading your kind letter, I wished that my father3 were still living and here to read it with me. Many of the places you mention I do not remember, but he would have remembered all of them. I remember the Round Hill Church perfectly, but had no idea that the head of the Opequon Creek was so near Round Hill4. It was not with my grandfather, William Cather5, that Henry Clay6 used to stop on his journeys, but with my great-grandfather, James Cather7, who lived somewhere beyond Flint Ridge. Lena Gore's8 mother9 was a Campbell, not a Cather. Lena's father10 was the son of "old Mother Gore11," who was a daughter of my great-grandfather, James Cather. The tough tavern12 I mentioned13 was near Hoag Creek, much nearer Winchester14 than is the present post-office, Gore15. A young engineer in Washington16 has written me that the denuded Double-S17 is finally to be blasted away and made a straight line18. What a pity! I made a short motor trip19 through the valley three years ago, but when I passed my old home20 I turned my eyes away from it. Such ruin and desolation is sad to look upon. The old winding road from Gore up to Timber Ridge was one of the loveliest things in all Virginia21.
Thank you for your good letter, I am
Gratefully and Cordially yours, Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let3014.xml
- Letter identifier
- 3014
- Contents
- Document is photocopy of one leaf, typewritten on recto only, with notes in an unknown hand made at a later date.
- Person to whom letter was written
- T. Kenneth Wood1
- Date letter was written
- April 7, 1941
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Willa Cather Collection (RG2639.AM), Nebraska State Historical Society, Lincoln, NE
Individual Annotations
In Part VII, chapter III of Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940), Mr. Whitford, Mrs. Blake, and Nancy have a brief encounter with a group of "rowdies" on the road near the "disreputable tavern near Hoag Creek."
A stretch of road up Timber Ridge with two consecutive S-shaped curves. The Double-S was a branch off Hollow Road about two miles west of Willow Shade, the Cather home in Back Creek Valley, VA.
As part of the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s, the Blue Ridge Parkway was constructed in Frederick County, which redirected traffic from what Cather remembers as the "Double-S" road.
Cather and Edith Lewis went to Virginia in April 1938 (#2134).
Willow Shade (Back Creek Valley, VA): Home built by Willa Cather’s grandparents, William and Caroline Cather, in 1851. Willa Cather and her parents lived at Willow Shade soon after her birth until 1883, when they relocated to Nebraska.
Willow Shade, mid-1870s. Philip L. and Helen Cather Southwick Collection, Archives Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries.
Person Annotations
Wood, Thomas Kenneth (1877-1958). American physician and historian. Born in Muncy, PA, Thomas Kenneth Wood returned to Muncy to practice medicine after graduating from the Medico-Chirurgical College of Philadelphia (1903). Wood was a founding member and president of the Muncy Valley Private Hospital (1923) and founder of the Muncy Historical Society. He was the first president and editor of the Society’s Now and Then: A Quarterly Magazine of History and Biography. In 1941 and 1942 Willa Cather corresponded with Wood about her family’s history in Virginia.
Cather, Charles Fectigue (1848-1928). Cather’s father.
Charles Fectigue (possibly Fectique) Cather was born in the Back
Creek Valley of Virginia, north of Winchester. His family were sheep raisers
who were largely, but not entirely, Union supporters during the Civil War.
He married Mary Virginia Seibert Boak, daughter of Confederate supporters,
in 1872. In 1883 he and his family followed his parents, William and
Caroline Cather, and brother George to Webster County in Nebraska, where
various cousins and uncles had also settled. Initially he ran a ranch in the
county but soon moved his family into the town of Red Cloud, where he had an
insurance and real estate business. Four of his children, Willa, Roscoe,
Charles, and Jessica, were born in Virginia, while three, James, Elsie, and
John, were born in Nebraska. Cather’s relationship with her father was very
warm: she made regular visits to her parents in Red Cloud and especially
enjoyed her father’s letters expressing appreciation of her novels. A week
after she concluded a visit to her ailing father in Red Cloud, he died of
heart disease. He served as the prototype for Hillary Templeton in “Old Mrs.
Harris” (1932).
Cather, William (1823-1887). Farmer; Cather’s grandfather.
Born in Back Creek Valley, VA, a son of James and Ann Howard Cather,
William Cather farmed and also raised sheep. He married Emily Anne Caroline
Smith in 1846, and they had two sons and three daughters who survived to
adulthood. In 1851, William Cather built a brick house he named “Willow
Shade,” where Willa Cather lived in her early childhood. William Cather and
his wife sided with the Union during the Civil War; after the war, William
Cather served his community as sheriff and funded schools. After visiting
his eldest son, George P. Cather, in Nebraska in 1874, he decided to settle
there, eventually bringing their surviving children, including Charles F.
Cather, Willa’s father. Later William turned his Webster County farmland
over to Charles, and he and his wife moved to Red Cloud, NE, taking their
orphaned grandchildren Kyd Clutter and Retta Ayre, with them. Cather
portrayed her paternal grandparents as Grandfather and Grandmother Burden in
My Ántonia (1918).
Clay, Henry (1777-1852). American politician. Born in Hanover
County, VA, Henry Clay was a leader of the Whig party, which was formed in
opposition to the Democratic party of Andrew Jackson. He unsuccessfully ran
for President of the United States five times, served as Secretary of State
and Speaker of the House of Representatives, and was involved in the
Missouri Compromise (1820), the Tariff Compromise (1833), and the Compromise
of 1850. According to Cather family tradition, Henry Clay visited James
Cather (Willa Cather’s grandfather) at his home at Flint Ridge.
Cather, James (1795-1875). Willa Cather’s great-grandfather. Born in the Gainesboro area of Frederick County, VA, James Cather was a son of Jasper Cather and Sarah Moore Cather. He married Nancy Ann Howard in 1819, and they had eight children, of whom four died of tuberculosis. James Cather was well-known in his community
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.
Gore, Laura Campbell (1853-1905). Cather’s cousin by marriage. Born in Virginia, the daughter of James H. Campbell and Elizabeth Lupton Campbell, Laura Campbell married Perry Gore, son of Cather’s great-aunt, Sidney Cather Gore, in 1877. Laura and Perry Gore had two children, Lena Campbell Gore and Walter T. Gore. Perry Gore died in 1903 and Laura lived on their farm in the Stonewall district of Frederick County until her own death.
Gore, Perry Cather (1849-1903). Virginia farmer; Cather’s cousin. Born in Back Creek, VA, the eldest son of Mahlon and Sidney Cather Gore, Perry Gore attended the Loudoun Valley Academy, but, unlike his brothers, did not go to college. He farmed in the Stonewall District of Frederick County the rest of his life. In 1877 he married Laura C. Campbell, and they had two children, Lena and Walter.
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).
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940) by Willa Cather
