Willa Cather was born in Back Creek Valley near Winchester, Virginia, on December 7, 1873. She was the first of seven children born to Charles F. and Mary Virginia Boak Cather. Her family had emigrated to the United States shortly after the Revolutionary War from Ireland by way of Wales. The combination of unsuccessful sheep farming and a family history of tuberculosis prompted the family to move nine years later to Nebraska. The family traveled west by train to homestead in Webster County. Her father moved the family from the homestead farm to the town of Red Cloud, where he pursued a career in insurance.
