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#3258: Ellen Burns on behalf of Willa Cather to Duncan M. Vinsonhaler, May 9, 1923

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May 9, 1923. Mr. Duncan M. Vinsonhaler1 First National Bank Building Omaha, Nebraska3.
Dear Sir:

Miss Cather is in France4 to be gone for six or eight months. I am forwarding your letter to her. You will understand, therefore, any delay there may be in hearing from her.

Yours very truly, Ellen Burns5 Secretary Letter from
Willa Cather's secy—Bakst portrait Mr. Duncan M. Visonhaler1, First National Bank Building, Omaha3, Nebraska. GRAND CENTRAL STA. N.Y2 MAY 9 1923 12 - M

Information about this letter:

Source File:
cat.let3258.xml
Letter identifier
3258
Contents
Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only. Includes one typewritten envelope.
Person to whom letter was written
Duncan M. Visonhaler 1
Date letter was written
May 9, 1923
Place letter was written
New York, New York, United States2
Location of original letter
Willa Cather Papers, 1899-1949, in the Clifton Waller Barrett Library (6494), University of Virginia, Special Collections, Charlottesville, VA

Person Annotations

1141

Vinsonhaler, Duncan MacArthur (1867-1954). American judge. Born in Missouri, Duncan MacArthur Vinsonhaler married Isabelle Ellison in Kirksville, MO, in 1889, and received a law degree from Michigan University in 1891. Vinsonhaler served as judge of Douglas County, Nebraska (1900-1906) and as a senior member of the firm Vinsonhaler, McGuckin & Caldwell in Omaha, NE. In 1922 Vinsonhaler wrote Willa Cather a letter praising One of Ours (1922), and in 1923 Vinsonhaler and Cather corresponded about Léon Bakst’s portrait of Cather commissioned by a group of women in in Omaha, NE.

1761

Burns, Ellen. Name used to sign letters as Cather’s secretary. Several times in the 1920s, letters were signed under the name Ellen Burns, ostensibly Cather’s secretary. These letters were sent when Cather was away from New York City and, in at least one instance, when Cather was feigning being away from New York City. The signatures on these letters and some manuscript corrections strongly suggest that Edith Lewis signed them and likely dictated them (Lewis never learned to type). Put another way, it seems likely that no person named Ellen Burns was actually involved in the production of these letters.

Place Annotations

New York, New York, United States
Omaha, Nebraska, United States
France

© 2004-2024, Willa Cather Archive. Emily J. Rau, editor. Updated 2023. The Willa Cather Archive is freely distributed by the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. UNL Logo