Willa Cather

A Lost Lady Willa Cather

Thirty or forty years ago, in one of those grey towns along the Burlington railroad, whichare so much greyer today than they were then, there was a house well known from Omahato Denver for its hospitality and for a certain charm of atmosphere. Well known, that is tosay, to the railroad aristocracy of that time; men who had to do with the railroad itself, orwith one of the "land companies" which were its by-products. In those days it was enoughto say of a man that he was "connected with the Burlington." There were the directors, thegeneral managers, vice-presidents, superintendents, whose names we all knew; and theiryounger brothers or nephews were auditors, freight agents, departmental assistants. Cather was born Wilella Sibert Cather in 1873 on her maternal grandmother's farm in the Back Creek Valley near Winchester, Virginia. Her father was Charles Fectigue Cather (d. 1928), whose family had lived on land in the valley for six generations. Cather's family originated in Wales, the family name deriving from Cadair Idris, a mountain in Gwynedd:13 Her mother was Mary Virginia Boak (died 1931), a former school teacher. Within a year of Cather's birth, the family moved to Willow Shade, a Greek Revival-style home on 130 acres given to them by her paternal grandparents.