Guide to Reading Letter Transcriptions
Some of these features are only visible when "plain text" is off.
| 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 |
I have just sent Mr. Foe3 a check $167.00 for
his services as attorney, and also a check for $70.10 to pay the taxes due on the
Osborne4 land. Mr. Foe suggests that I
send him a check for $233.49 to pay the back taxes on the Merrill5 farm in Sm
Smith County, Kansas6 (N. E. quarter section
I, town I, range II west)
My brother Roscoe7 wrote me that all he could hear about this land was bad, though he had never seen it. I am enclosing a copy of the letter I sent Mr. Foe, and I would prefer not to pay this considerable sum of back interest unless you think well of the land and strongly advise me to do so.
Sincerely yours Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let3159.xml
- Letter identifier
- 3159
- Contents
- Letter is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Willard Crowell 1
- Date letter was written
- January 16, 1939
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- WCPM Collection, National Willa Cather Center, Red Cloud, NE
Person Annotations
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.
Foe, Howard S. (1892-1960). Webster Count attorney. Born in Webster County, NE, Howard Foe was one of the five sons of Elizabeth and Samuel Foe; the elder Foe ran a billiard room in Red Cloud, NE. Howard Foe taught school to support his studies at the University of Nebraska law school, graduating in 1915. He became the Webster County attorney by 1920, later returning to private practice. In 1919 he married Vernon M. Storey, with whom he had two sons. In the 1930s and 1940s he did legal work for Willa Cather related to Webster County farm mortgages she held.
Osborn, William Jennings Bryan (1898-1972). Webster County farmer. Born in Webster County, NE, William Osborn was one of the eleven children of laborer John Osborn and Emma Goss Osborn. He married Ellen Pauline Streit in 1922; they had two daughters, Evelyn and Doris. During the agricultural depression of the 1930s, Cather came to hold the mortgage on William Osborn’s farm in the Red Cloud area; he lost the farm in 1940 but continued to live on it as a renter.
Merrill, John Lincoln (1867-1948). Nuckolls County farmer. Born in Iowa, son of Charles A. and Susan Anderson Merrill, John Merrill and his family moved to Mitchell County, KS, in 1873. He married Louisa Atenhan in 1889; one child, William Merrill, survived to adulthood. In 1907 the family moved to Nuckolls County, NE (adjacent to Webster County, NE), where he farmed in various areas until the 1940s; he rented rather than owned his farm in 1940. Cather may have acquired his land through a mortgage in the 1930s.
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).
Place Annotations
