Wilella Cather (rhymes with gather) was born on December 7, 1873, in the home of her short, stalwart, maternal grandmother, Rachel Boak, in Back Creek Valley (near Gore), on the northwest tip of Virginia. The oldest of seven children, Willa was named for an aunt who died of diphtheria. She hated her given, or Christian, name and as soon as she had some say about the matter, friends and family knew her as “Willie.” She called herself “William” as an adolescent, and she signed her early college papers “William Cather, Jr.” Throughout her life—even among family—she insisted that she had been born in 1876.
Willa’s father, Charles, was tall and fair, with the manners of a southern gentleman. As a young man, he’d studied law for a couple of years and, because of his helpful nature, neighbors often asked for his help in settling disputes. Willa’s mother, Jennie, was the dominant parent, and, according to biographer E. K. Brown, when necessary, she disciplined her children with a rawhide whip; in later years, none of them seemed to resent the whippings and even declared them beneficial. Mrs. Cather, however, gave her children the freedom to do almost anything they wished, so long as they obeyed household rules.
When Willa was about a year old, her parents moved a mile or so to her grandfather William Cather’s farm, Willow Shade, named for the multitude of willow trees surrounding the house. The soil at Willow Shade was too poor for farming, so most of the family’s income came from raising sheep. Willa enjoyed going with her father to drive in the sheep, just as she equally enjoyed being read to by Grandmother Boak, who lived with the family.
In 1877, Grandfather William and his wife, Caroline, left Virginia and moved to Webster County, Nebraska, where they bought a farm. Six years later, Charles moved his family to join them; Charles’ brother George lived on a farm not far away. At first Willa felt as if she were being uprooted from everything familiar to her and abandoned in the middle of nowhere. With no playmates, she often spent her days exploring the vast prairie on her pony, where she discovered German, Norwegian, Swedish, and Bohemian neighbors in their dugouts and sod houses.
In 1884, the family moved to Red Cloud, Nebraska, about seventeen miles away (in those days, the land was open range, and distance had to be estimated by tying a rope with a knot in it around a wagon wheel and counting the revolutions). In town, Willa befriended the town’s two doctors, accompanied them on their rounds and learned as much as her eager mind could absorb about prairie medicine. Once, she even administered chloroform to a boy whose leg needed to be amputated. In the evenings, she read to Grandmother Boak from the English classics, the Bible, and Pilgrim’s Progress.
As a child and adolescent on the Nebraska prairie, Willa Cather grew to know many people, some of whom would later figure prominently in her writing. One of these adults was William Ducker, an Englishman, who began tutoring her in Greek and Latin. The small laboratory in his home fascinated her and she often helped him with his experiments. Mr. Schindelmeisser drank heavily, gave Willa piano lessons, and became the model for Professor Wunsch in The Song of the Lark. Mr. and Mrs. Wiener, the Cathers’ Jewish neighbors, introduced her to European literature and were immortalized as the Rosens in “Old Mrs. Harris.”
