Willard Crowell (June 9, 1941) | Willa Cather Archive

#3169: Willa Cather to Willard Crowell, June 9, 1941

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June 9, 1941. My dear Mr. Crowell¹:

I want to tell you how sorry I was to learn from the home paper of your brother's death. I remember Mr. H. H. Crowell³ distinctly. He lived on the farm which you and your wife⁴ now own, did he not?

I wish he and Walter Sherwood⁵ could have lived to see this more kindly spring, with its well distributed rains, come back to Nebraska⁶. The last paper alarms me a little, lest you may have had too much rain on the second of June. I hope the river will not do any damage to the bottom farms.

Yours, with sincere sympathy, Wi Willa Cather

P.S. My hand⁷ is slowly improving but is still in a brace, which accounts for my unnatural signature - I hold the pen between my middle and third fingers.

Information about this letter:

Source File:: cat.let3169.xml
Letter identifier: 3169
Contents: Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
Person to whom letter was written: Willard Crowell ¹
Date letter was written: June 9, 1941
Place letter was written: New York, New York, United States²
Location of original letter: WCPM Collection, National Willa Cather Center, Red Cloud, NE

Individual Annotations

Cather significantly injured a tendon in her right thumb in November 1940 after signing hundreds of copies of her novel Sapphira and the Slave Girl. Her right hand was immobilized for months afterward, and the pain recurred often in later years. Dr. Frank Ober built a brace specifically for her hand in 1941.

Person Annotations

0108

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.

0442

Crowell, Henry (1869-1941). Webster County farmer. Born in Indiana, Henry Crowell came to Webster County, NE, with his wife, Marietta, and family, in the late 1890s. He farmed in the Batin area of the county. Crowell's brother Willard Crowell managed properties Cather owned in Webster County.

1737

Crowell, Lulu Adelma Helen Wolfe (1882-1969). Webster County farm wife. Born in Indiana, the youngest daughter of Joseph and Sarah Huffman Wolfe, Lulu Wolfe married Willard Crowell in Red Cloud, NE, in 1907; they had six children, two of whom died young. The Crowells farmed in Batin township in Webster County. Cather may not have known Lulu Adelma Crowell personally, but knew of her as the wife of Cather’s agent in Webster County in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

0159

Sherwood, Walter Allen (1867-1941). Red Cloud banker; Carrie Miner Sherwood's husband. Walter Sherwood, born in Wisconsin, came with his family to Webster County in 1879. He worked in Silas Garber’s Farmers and Merchants bank in Red Cloud after his marriage to Carrie Miner in 1889; they had two sons, Clement Miner and Philip. After the failure of the Garber bank, Sherwood became cashier of the new People’s Bank, organized by his father-in-law, J.L. Miner, and eventually president of the bank.

Place Annotations

New York, New York, United States

Nebraska, United States